Quotes about Writers

Too many American authors have a servile streak where their backbone should be. Where's our latest Nobel laureate? More than likely you'll find him in the Rose Garden kissing the First Lady's foot.

When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up an honest trade like shoe repair, cattle stealing, or screwworm management.

The best American writers have come from the hinterlands - Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college.

The writer speaks not TO his audience (who wants to listen to lectures?) but FOR them, expressing their thoughts and emotions through the imaginative power of his art.

What I take from writers I like is their economy -- the ability to use language to very effective ends. The ability to have somebody read something and see it, or for somebody to paint an entire landscape of visual imagery with just sheets of words -- that's magical. That's what I've been trying to strive for -- to draw a clear picture, to open up a new dimension

I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

My job [as a writer] is to awaken in the reader his or her own sense of wonder.

Our job is to enter your heart.

The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.

As writers we need to crack open language.

"Book after book, I get hooked, every time the writer talks to me like a friend."

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

I love being a writer. It's the paperwork I can't stand.

So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.

When you take stuff from one writer it's plagiarism; but when you take it from many writers, it's research.

There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.

The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of the past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man; it can be one of the props, the pillars, to help him endure and prevail. See Poets & Writers

It is his [the poet's, the writer's] privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. See Poets & Writers

He [the writer] must, teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and compassion and sacrifice. See Poets & Writers

He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. See other 'Poets & Writers'

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.

One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.

Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.