Writer Quotes
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I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.
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Every writer, big or small, needs to say or write that the genius is always hissed at by his contemporaries. Naturally, this is not true, it happens only occasionally and often by chance. But this need within the writer is enlightening.
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You're part of the human fabric of experience. You don't have to have cancer to write about cancer. You don't have to have somebody close to you die to understand what death is. Definitely, the more you live, the more experiences fall into your spectrum. As a writer, you must have been told: Write about what you know. But Kafka didn't. Gogol didn't. Did Shakespeare write only what he knew? Our own selves are limitless. And our capacity for empathy is giant.
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Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).
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Why did I become a writer? A bird's feather on my windowpane in winter and all at once there arose in my heart a battle of embers never to subside again.
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That I was a writer was further proof of God’s far-sightedness; she was convinced that by some magic of propinquity she would acquire a mastery of the English language.
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When you're reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call "taking up with a writer," something happens.
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When I was young, I kept trying to read 'Moby-Dick', and I couldn't get that far into it. And I kept thinking, 'Well, man, if I can't read the great American novel, I could never be a writer.' And this bothered me a great deal.
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A catless writer is almost inconceivable.
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I'm a writer and a photographer - I'm totally aware that doesn't always translate to TV.
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Don't scatter your fire! You are a prose writer: stick to your own tool!
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Every published writer, myself included, was at one time unpublished. All writers know what rejection feels like.
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My idea of teaching literature is just to read great passages aloud or to look at it the way a writer does, which is what I try to do. Which is to say, 'How does this writer do this? How did he order his scenes? Do you notice any pattern to his sentences?'
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My past makes me an insider, but my profession makes me an outsider. A writer always stands outside to report on reality.
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You really need to approach each book as if you have been a failure. . . . If you start to believe your flap-copy, you're finished as a writer.
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I consider myself a writer. I always wanted to act, and as a teen, I studied acting devotedly. Eventually, I got writing work, but very little acting work.
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Being a Negro writer these days is a racket and I'm going to make the most of it while it lasts. About twice a year I sell a story. It is acclaimed. I am a genius in the making. Thank God for this Negro literary renaissance. Long may it flourish
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A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.
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The writer must proudly consent to bear his own date, knowing that there are no masterpieces in eternity, but only works in history, and that they survive only to the degree that they have left the past behind them and heralded the future.
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A writer is the one who loves to write . . . on and about anything . . . And this clears that I am a writer!!
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I've always wanted to be a writer. Always been very creative. I always laughed at things that the rest of my family would sort of get angry, like not understand.
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The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.
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It’s just that everything is so . . . unreliable lately.” “You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water,” he said. “Is that a quote?” He nodded. “Rabindranath Tagore. He’s a great writer. You should read him.
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My agent is so totally honest, which is just what every writer needs. She won't let me sell a crappy book, even if I want to.
