Doe Quote by William Faulkner

The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in…

— Willa Cather

I don’t think any man writing can worry about what the act of writing costs him, even though at times he is very aware…

— Robert Creeley

The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.

— Elizabeth Bowen

A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two…

— William Zinsser

No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.

— Irwin Shaw

The first job of a writer is to be honest.

— Irvine Welsh

If you're a woman writer, sometime, somewhere, you will be asked: Do you think of yourself as a writer first, or as a woman…

— Margaret Atwood

“Preoccupation with style will not produce it. No amount of editing and polishing will have any appreciable effect on the flavor of how a…

— Raymond Chandler

If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never be able to write anything that…

— Thomas Merton

When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly…

— Samuel Johnson

No writer should minimize the factor that affects everyone, but is beyond control: luck.

— John Jakes

“I sometimes marvel that a third-rate writer like me has been able to palm himself off as a second-rate writer.”

— John Collier