Able Quote by Dorothea Brande

“The very qualities that make one a writer in the first place contribute to the block: hypersensitivity, stubbornness, insatiability, and so on. Given the…

— John Gardner

I'm not interested in writers who are overcome with certainty, with single-mindedness, or with a sense of how consistent and morally upstanding they are.…

— Andrew O'Hagan

“What are they like, writers, in your mind: it may seem strange, but initially it’s not about writing. A writer is someone who struggles…

— Christian Bobin

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

— Fannie Hurst

I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.

— John Irving

Writers are a fascinating breed, because there are so many kinds of them, they are made by so many circumstances, conditions, and mysteries, and…

— William Saroyan

The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and…

— Robert De Niro

“Writers by nature are subversive, observant, and discerning, and their voice contains that.”

— Amy Tan

There are two kinds of writers, those who are and those who aren't. With the first, content and form belong together like soul and…

— Karl Kraus

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.

— Clifton Fadiman

The less conscious one is of being a writer, the better the writing.

— Pico Iyer

“People have an idea of what writers are: crazy; intellectual; moody; slightly more interesting than other people. Sometimes you just have to throw a…

— Alistair Cross