For Writers Quotes

My novels point out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.

Beauty and truth may be attributes of good writing but if the writer deliberately aims at truth he is likely to find that what he has hit is the didactic.

Nature not content with denying him the ability to think has endowed him with the ability to write.

Write something even if it's just a suicide note.

It is in the hard rockpile labour of seeking to win hold or deserve a reader's interest that the pleasant agony of writing comes in.

A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied he is content.

Self-expression is for babies and seals where it can be charming. A writer's business is to affect the reader.

Tennessee Williams said if he got rid of his demons he would lose his angels.

Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man write about a man.

Just get it down on paper and then we'll see what to do with it.

Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death.

When I am dead I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet but his books were read.'

It is a sobering thought that each of us gives his hearers and his readers a chance to look into the inner working of his mind when he speaks or writes.

He is limp and damp and milder than the breath of a cow.

In any really good subject one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.

Writers write to influence their readers their preachers their auditors but always at bottom to be more themselves.

Caesar had perished from the world of men Had not his sword been rescued by his pen.

Writing when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.

A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed in keeping rabbits.

There is an accuracy that defeats itself by the overemphasis of details. I often say that one must permit oneself and quite advisedly and deliberately a certain margin of misstatement.

That's not writing that's typing.

I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories.

I struggled in the beginning. I said I was going to write the truth so help me God. And I thought I was. I found I couldn't. Nobody can write the absolute truth.

The beginning is easy what happens next is much harder.

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

Writers should be read - but neither seen nor heard.

There is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.

Writing: I certainly do rewrite my central myth in every book and would never read or trust any writer who did not also do so.

I can write better than anyone who can write faster and I can write faster than anyone who can write better.

The truth is we've not really developed a fiction that can accommodate the full tumult the zaniness and crazed quality of modern experience.

The pimple is perfect.

Almost as a rule, political dissidents were writers.

As a writer, self-doubt is useless. Get rid of it, rip it out like a weed and compost it.

A true writer does not seek wealth or fame does seek to find himself in each of his readers souls.

Just … isn’t giving up allowed sometimes? Isn’t it okay to say, ‘This really hurts, so I’m going to stop trying’?

Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.

People who don't read fiction are scared of what's inside their own heads.

There are books that change our perspectives and books that change our personalities.

There are some great, subversive female writers out there. Gender should not affect anything. It does, but it shouldn't.

Bravery isn't brandishing a sword. It's standing your moral ground and letting others try their best to take you down.

Don’t forget the snow in the summertime, because you will meet him again when the summer is over!

What wouldn’t my people give for a few bites of the biryani she ordered me to throw away yesterday because she said it smelt?

I think the best thing about being a writer is getting to dream. It's constantly viewing life through the "what if?" lens.

Elegant writers depict intricacy with simplicity.

If you want a forgotten corner to be remembered, a featureless place to be loved, a shadowy emptiness to shine, put some flowers there!

Short story collections are the literary equivalent of canapés, tapas and mezze in the world of gastronomy: Delightful assortments of tasty morsels to whet the reader's appetite.

Days become weeks. Weeks become months. Month become years. And years become silence.

You deserve good sperm. You’ve waited a long time.

THEY STOLE YOUR STYLEBUT THEY COULDN'T STEAL YOUR GLOW

I am protective of the gentle slope of stomach bulging like an early pregnancy, at my waist. I've earned its existence with everything I've been forced to swallow.