Writer Quotes
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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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Every published writer, myself included, was at one time unpublished. All writers know what rejection feels like.
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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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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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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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For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.
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A catless writer is almost inconceivable.
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A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.
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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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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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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 feel like I have to be a walking encyclopedia - I constantly have to be explaining myself - especially when I do table work or when I'm talking to a dramaturg about, you know, the culture, but also what I'm trying to do as a writer in this particular play. You know, you have to protect yourself too.
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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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I write about what I know and what I have experienced. This keeps me an "honest" writer.
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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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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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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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You have to really have a taste for being alone to be a writer.
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My impression of him, and the impressions of everyone in the office, was he is a very fine lawyer, a very hard worker, a beautiful writer and absolutely, meticulously objective.
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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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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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The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.
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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.
