Quotes About Writing

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer.

A writer without a pen would be like a duck without water!

As I read more and more - and it was not all verse, by any means - my love for the real life of words increased until I knew that I must live with them and in them, always. I knew, in fact, that I must be a writer of words, and nothing else.

Don't romanticise your 'vocation.' You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle.' All that matters is what you leave on the page.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

Failure has been my best friend as a writer. It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through.

As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.

The writer is the engineer of the human soul.

I am not a consecutive writer.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.

I don't have writer's block, really. I do have times when I can't get the lead, and that is the only part of the story which I have serious trouble with. I don't write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone - the whole point of view.

To call someone like me a writer-activist suggests that it's not the job of a writer to write about the society in which they live. But it used to be our job.

Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good writer.

I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

In my next incarnation, I want to be a writer.

I feel very lucky and privileged to be a writer. I feel lucky in the sense that I can branch out into prose and tell different kinds of stories and stuff. But being a writer is so great because you're literally not dependent on anybody.

Television? It's a gateway to writer's block, isn't it?

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate, and infinitely better looking.