How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
–Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
–Joan Didion (1934 - )
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn’t behave that way you would never do anything.
–John Irving (1942 - )
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can’t help it.
–Leo Rosten (1908 - )
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
–Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
–Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.
–Russell Baker (1925 - )
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
–Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), from Boswell’s Life of Johnson
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.
–Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784) (attributed)
I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.
–Solomon Short
Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.
–Stanislaw J. Lec (1909 - 1966), “Unkempt Thoughts”
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
–Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)
We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
–W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
–Walter Bagehot (1826 - 1877)
