132 Quotes About Writers-and-writing

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Whatever an author puts between the two covers of his book is public property; whatever of himself he does not put there is his private property, as much as if he had never written a word.

You who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities and think long and hard on what your powers are equal to and what they are unable to perform.

The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness.

The older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years.

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 one book.

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

I never think when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well.

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.