Writer Quotes
Got a whole list of quotes about writing and such. Thought the English nerds would like 'em.
> If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little
faster.
> Isaac Asimov
> The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion
rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work,
and that writing didn't require any.
> Russell Baker
> Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're
doomed.
> Ray Bradbury
> I don't think it is possible to give tips for finding one's voice;
it's one of those things for which there aren't really any tricks or
shortcuts, or even any advice that necessarily translates from writer
to writer. All I can tell you is to write as much as possible.
> Poppy Z. Brite
> I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then
stop.
> Clarence Budington Kelland
> The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in
trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.
> Raymond Chandler
> I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because when
two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the
worries and only half the royalties.
> Agatha Christie
> Life is what happens to a writer between drafts.
> Damon (aka Dennis R. Miller)
> .who spent 25 years completing his novel The Perfect Song.
> I believe that in a good collaboration, the authors bring their
strengths to the story; one author's strength cancels the other
author's weakness, and back and forth it goes.
> Jack Dann
> Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as
far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
> E. L. Doctorow
> People on the outside think there's something magical about writing,
that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come
down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in
back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.
> Harlan Ellison
> When my horse is running good, I don't stop to give him sugar.
> William Faulkner
> You can't say, I won't write today because that excuse will extend
into several days, then several months, then. you are not a writer
anymore, just someone who dreams about being a writer.
> Dorothy C. Fontana
> Writing is a crummy profession, but a good hobby.
> Paavo Haavikko
> To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of
every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue
flame of genius to start from the breastbone - just plain going at it,
in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not
to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and
over and over....
> John Hersey
> The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time
you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never
do anything.
> John Irving
> A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either
writing or thinking about writing.
> Eugene Ionesco
> I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
> Thomas Jefferson
> Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and
sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're
managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
> Stephen King
> Writing is a fairly lonely business unless you invite people in to
watch you do it, which is often distracting and then have to ask them
to leave.
> Marc Lawrence
> It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey
that matters in the end.
> Ursula K. LeGuin
> Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts.
Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about
nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are been taught to
be ashamed of not being 'outgoing'. But a writer's job is ingoing.
> Ursula K. LeGuin
> You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won't be able
to take a break from being a writer.
> Stephen Leigh
> When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure
it but the scratching of a pen.
> Samuel Lover
> All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary -
it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
> Somerset Maugham
> The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing.
> Ken MacLeod
> We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
> Somerset Maugham
> The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.
> Friederich Nietzsche
> Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their
rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.
> Vladimir Nabokov
> I write to tell stories. I believe that there a some professions in
the world that will last forever: doctor or a nurse, teacher, builder
and a storyteller. I write also to become myself, more so day by day.
Writing is a way to shape out visible and invisible, in myself as well
as in the world.
> Eppu Nuotio
> One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a
habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing has
to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic, physiological
and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating.
> Niyi Osundare
> Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through
thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote.
Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is
unnecessary to say.
> Edgar A. Poe
> There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people
in California who couldn't write.
> Terry Pratchett
> The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure
to wonder whether you are happy or not.
> George Bernard Shaw
> The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is
willing to go in following his own compulsions.
> John Updike
> I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
> Peter de Vries
> An artist's career always begins tomorrow
> James Whistler
> I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do
anything. I just want to write.
> P. G. Wodehouse
> I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.
> P. G. Wodehouse
> ...after being asked about his writing technique
> Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter,
notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are
like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.
> Jane Yolen
> If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little
faster.
> Isaac Asimov
> The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion
rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work,
and that writing didn't require any.
> Russell Baker
> Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're
doomed.
> Ray Bradbury
> I don't think it is possible to give tips for finding one's voice;
it's one of those things for which there aren't really any tricks or
shortcuts, or even any advice that necessarily translates from writer
to writer. All I can tell you is to write as much as possible.
> Poppy Z. Brite
> I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then
stop.
> Clarence Budington Kelland
> The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in
trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.
> Raymond Chandler
> I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because when
two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the
worries and only half the royalties.
> Agatha Christie
> Life is what happens to a writer between drafts.
> Damon (aka Dennis R. Miller)
> .who spent 25 years completing his novel The Perfect Song.
> I believe that in a good collaboration, the authors bring their
strengths to the story; one author's strength cancels the other
author's weakness, and back and forth it goes.
> Jack Dann
> Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as
far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
> E. L. Doctorow
> People on the outside think there's something magical about writing,
that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come
down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in
back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.
> Harlan Ellison
> When my horse is running good, I don't stop to give him sugar.
> William Faulkner
> You can't say, I won't write today because that excuse will extend
into several days, then several months, then. you are not a writer
anymore, just someone who dreams about being a writer.
> Dorothy C. Fontana
> Writing is a crummy profession, but a good hobby.
> Paavo Haavikko
> To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of
every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue
flame of genius to start from the breastbone - just plain going at it,
in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not
to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and
over and over....
> John Hersey
> The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time
you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never
do anything.
> John Irving
> A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either
writing or thinking about writing.
> Eugene Ionesco
> I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
> Thomas Jefferson
> Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and
sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're
managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
> Stephen King
> Writing is a fairly lonely business unless you invite people in to
watch you do it, which is often distracting and then have to ask them
to leave.
> Marc Lawrence
> It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey
that matters in the end.
> Ursula K. LeGuin
> Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts.
Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about
nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are been taught to
be ashamed of not being 'outgoing'. But a writer's job is ingoing.
> Ursula K. LeGuin
> You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won't be able
to take a break from being a writer.
> Stephen Leigh
> When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure
it but the scratching of a pen.
> Samuel Lover
> All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary -
it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
> Somerset Maugham
> The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing.
> Ken MacLeod
> We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
> Somerset Maugham
> The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.
> Friederich Nietzsche
> Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their
rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.
> Vladimir Nabokov
> I write to tell stories. I believe that there a some professions in
the world that will last forever: doctor or a nurse, teacher, builder
and a storyteller. I write also to become myself, more so day by day.
Writing is a way to shape out visible and invisible, in myself as well
as in the world.
> Eppu Nuotio
> One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a
habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing has
to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic, physiological
and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating.
> Niyi Osundare
> Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through
thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote.
Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is
unnecessary to say.
> Edgar A. Poe
> There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people
in California who couldn't write.
> Terry Pratchett
> The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure
to wonder whether you are happy or not.
> George Bernard Shaw
> The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is
willing to go in following his own compulsions.
> John Updike
> I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
> Peter de Vries
> An artist's career always begins tomorrow
> James Whistler
> I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do
anything. I just want to write.
> P. G. Wodehouse
> I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.
> P. G. Wodehouse
> ...after being asked about his writing technique
> Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter,
notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are
like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.
> Jane Yolen