Writers love nothing more than to talk about writing, which is why there are so many interesting quotes about the art of writing. Here are some more of my favorite quotes from a variety of writers on writing.
Ray Bradbury: You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
James Michener: I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.
William Makepeace Thackeray: There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes.
Mark Twain: Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Somerset Maugham: I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all, they are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
W H Auden: 'The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets.'
Nadine Gordimer: My eight-year-old son, when asked by a school friend what his mother's job was, said: "She's a typist."
Goethe: If any man wishes to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
Ernest Hemingway: The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit-detector.
Anne Lamott: We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little.
Epictetus: If you wish to be a writer, write.
Madeleine L'Engle: You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it's going to be too difficult for grown-ups, you write it for children.
Ambrose Bierce: PROOF-READER, n. A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
Ellen Datlow: Never throw up on an editor.
Eugene Ionesco: A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.
Carolyn Kizer: Poets are interested mostly in death and commas.
John Scalzi: Engrave this in your brain: EVERY WRITER GETS REJECTED. You will be no different.
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