writer

'To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone - just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied...

A writer has to have some kind of compulsive drive to do his work. If you don't have it, you'd better find another kind of work, because it's the only compulsion that will drive you through the psychological nightmares of writing. John McPhee

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” Thomas Mann

“Being a writer is an act of perpetual self-authorization. Who’s going to give you the authority to feel that what you notice is important? It will have to be you.” Verlyn Klinkenborg

A writer should not think he is bad or finished (if a book fails to find a market)...Every failure teaches something. You should have the feeling, as every experienced writer has, that there are more ideas where that one came from, more strength where the first strength came from, and that you...

'A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. He needs friendship. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a day-dreamer—to be living a kind of double life.' Jorge Luis Borges

'As a writer one doesn't belong anywhere. Fiction writers, I think, are even more outside the pale, necessarily on the edge of society. Because society and people are our meat, one really doesn't belong in the midst of society. The great challenge in writing is always to find the universal in...

A writer never finds the time to write. A writer makes it. If you don’t have the drive, the discipline, and the desire, then you can have all the talent in the world, and you aren’t going to finish your book. Nora Roberts

A writer should never mark the page with their own tears. Richard Flanagan

' A writer ought to be the best possible source about their work but the writing doesn't come out of self-examination. That part of yourself in your work is expressed willy-nilly, without your cooperation, motivation or collusion. You can't help being what you write and writing what you are...

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. Franz Kafka

The only writer to whom you should compare yourself is the writer you were yesterday. David B. Schlosser

You are a writer when you tell yourself you are. No one else's opinion matters. Screw them. You are what you say. Steven Pressfield

On a writer and his characters: “They must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them….He must know of them whether they be cold-blooded or passionate, whether true or false, and how far true and how far false. The depth and...

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players.… I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skilful at casting them. Gore Vidal

'The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.' Gene Fowler

TO become a WRITER I had to learn to INTERRUPT, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then LOUDER, and then to just speak in my own voice which is NOT LOUD AT ALL. Deborah Levy

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” Dr Seuss

'The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.' Raymond Chandler

It is Friday night (UK Time) and the gloss of Xmas has long gone, the bright fireworks are but a distant memory that signalled another day in the week before us. My question is this: it's a Friday night, what are you doing? Better yet, what do you wish you were doing? Sincerely yours, The...