Writer Quotes

4019 Writer quotes by 2168 unique authors

A painter can hang his pictures, but a writer can only hang himself. — Edward Dahlberg
Some literary types subscribe to the notion that being a writer like Salinger entitles a person to remain free of the standards that might apply… — Joyce Maynard
Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the… — Howard Nemerov
No one connected intimately with a writer has any appreciation of his temperament, except to think him overdoing everything. — Zane Grey
It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer. — Patricia Heaton
The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own… — William Golding
It's also true, however, that having conquered the regional writer ghetto, I am now intent on conquering the nationalist writer ghetto and moving out into… — Rick Moody
The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks. — Humphrey Carpenter
My creative partner is a writer, and he's got an executive producing credit on this film. We've made three films together and I would never… — Taylor Hackford
A writer loves the dark, loves it, but is always fumbling around in the light. — Joy Williams
The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated. — Raymond Chandler
A great writer has all 4 - but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2. — Susan Sontag
To make your life being a writer, it's an auto-slavery ... you are both the slave and the task-master. — Susan Sontag
The writer cannot make the seas of distraction stand still, but he [or she] can at times come between the madly distracted and the distractions. — Saul Bellow
For all time to come, the freedom and purity of the press are the test of national virtue and independence. No writer for the press,… — John Boyle O'Reilly
Auto da Fay reveals the trickles of a creative sensibility that later became a tide, but essentially, Weldon the writer emerges only at the very… — Joanna Murray-Smith
Every work [of literature] has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the… — Vivian Gornick
A serious life, by definition, is a life one reflects on, a life one tries to make sense of and bear witness to. Truth in… — Vivian Gornick
As a writer, you have control of the words you put on the page. But once that manuscript leaves your hand, you give control to… — Nicholas Meyer
The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It’s perceived as an accolade to be published as a ‘literary’ writer, but,… — Neil Cross
The best translators slip into the glove of a text and then turn it inside out into another language, and the whole thing comes out… — Alma Guillermoprieto
I'm a 24-hour tweet machine, I'm a 24-hour blogger. When there's no pressure on me, I can talk and write and lecture with the best… — Questlove
The career of a writer is comparable to that of a woman of easy virtue. You write first for pleasure, later for the pleasure of… — Marcel Achard
The man who comes to writing late, but is in essence a writer, may sometimes gain as much as he has lost: his experience of… — Wright Morris
Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write.… — A.L. Kennedy

Who Wrote These Writer Quotes

2,168 authors contributed a total of 4,019 Writer Quotes, led by these top contributors: