For Writers Quotes

Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues - which takes years.

It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.

But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living.

You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?

Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.

Good writers are in the business of leaving signposts saying, Tour my world, see and feel it through my eyes; I am your guide.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

I've enjoyed being a famous writer-except that every once in a while you have to write something.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Listen to the Bee Gees and you can learn to be a great writer.

Writing is one of the easiest things: erasing is one of the hardest.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?

A book, a true book, is the writer's confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed, directly or indirectly, by his characters, into presenting publicly his innermost feelings.

If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.

Can you really think artists and writers are the only people entitled to lives of their own?

Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

. . . All artists’ work is autobiographical. Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them.

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

You have to throw yourself away when you write.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

Success breeds volume, and it's just amazing how many young writers, artists, and musicians there are in town.

A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.

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

You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

If you cannot judge a book by its cover, surely we should not judge an author by one book alone?

To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance-- not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write.

The act of giving voice to this spiritual suffering is, in my view, the sacred duty of the writer.

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.

You can't be a good writer without being a good thinker.

Not only Freud but artists and writers were also interested in the unconscious. It was medicine that made the first steps toward modernity.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.

Writers are the engineers of human souls.

All writers are waiting for replies. That’s what I’ve learned. Maybe all human beings are

You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.

Happy children do not seem to grow up to be writers.

When success is your only option, positivity has to be your only choice.

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.

Great writers arrive among us like new diseases - threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.

Unfortunately many young writers are more concerned with fame than with their own work... It's much more important to write than to be written about.

Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.

I wrote my first book when I was 22 years old. I have a way with words and I love to write. I can write without getting writers block so I knew, it was a gift.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.