Prose was born yesterday – this is what we must tell ourselves. Poetry is pre-eminently the medium of past literatures. All the metrical combinations have been tried but nothing like this can be said of prose. Gustave Flaubert
Life is short and Art is long, indeed nearly impossible when one is writing in a language that is worn to the point of being threadbare, so worm-eaten that it frays at every touch. Gustave Flaubert
The best fame is a writer’s fame: it’s enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough that you get interrupted when you eat. Fran Lebowitz, cited Observer 30th May 1993
The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by others. Francois-Rene Chateaubriand, 1768-1848
Throughout the world, if it were sought,
Fair words enough a man shall find.
They be good cheap; they cost right naught;
Their substance is but only wind.
But well to say and so to mean –
That sweet accord is seldom seen. Thomas Wyatt, 1557
Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame
In keen iambics, but mild anagram:
Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command
Some peaceful province in Acrostic Land.
There thou mayest wings display and altars raise,
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways. John Dryden, 1631-1700, MacFlecknoe
Only a little more
I have to write,
Then I’ll give o’er,
And bid the world Good-night. Robert Herrick, His Poetry His Pillar, 1648
The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yoghurt. Calvin Trillin, Sunday Times 9th June 1991
An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever after. F Scott Fitzgerald 1896-1940
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. F Scott Fitzgerald
Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. F Scott Fitzgerald
This is a photograph of Norman Mailer. A very great writer – he er donated his ego to the Harvard Medical School to study. Sleeper 1973 starring Woody Allen & Diane Keaton & John Beck & Marya Small & Susan Miller & Mary Gregory & Don Keefer & Peter Hobbs & John McLiam & Bartlett Robinson & Chris Forbes & Brian Avery et al, director Woody Allen
Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write. A E Housman
Those who write don’t shoot, and those who shoot don’t write. Robert Kennedy
If you can’t annoy somebody with what you write, I think there’s little point in writing. Kingsley Amis, 1922-1995
To be more interested in the writer than the writing is just eternal human vulgarity. Martin Amis
Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal. Martin Amis, The Observer 30 August 1987
I’m a bit of a grinder. Novels are very long, and long novels are very, very long. It’s just a hell of a lot of man-hours. I tend to just go in there, and if it comes, it comes. A morning when I write not a single word doesn't worry me too much. If I come up against a brick wall, I’ll just go and play snooker or something or sleep on it, and my subconscious will fix it for me. Usually, it’s a journey without maps but a journey with a destination, so I know how it’s going to begin and I know how it’s going to end, but I don’t know how I’m going to get from one to the other. That, really, is the struggle of the novel. Martin Amis, 1995
Frank Keith of Illinois could write backward, upside-down and blind-folded! He could also simultaneously write any name or phrase with his left hand in front and his right hand behind. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! 2006
His writing is not about something; it is that something itself. Samuel Beckett, Our Exagmination Round the Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, 1929
The biggest obstacle to a professional writer is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon. Robert Benchley, Chips Off the Old Benchley, 1949
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous. Robert Benchley
From this it is clear how much the pen is worse than the sword. Robert Burton, English clergyman
They lard their lean books with the fat of others’ works. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
A loose, plain, rude writer ... I call a spade a spade. Robert Burton
Until you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 1817
That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. ibid.
Prose = words in their best order; – poetry = the best words in the best order. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk
Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing, and it becomes chronic in their sick minds. Juvenal A.D. 60 - c.130, Roman satirist, Satires bk 7
Assist me some extemporal god of rime, for I am sure I shall turn sonneteer. Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio. William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost I ii 192
The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board ... If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies. William Faulkner, Paris Spring Review, 1956
Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never! Edna Ferber, A Peculiar Treasure, 1939
Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people – and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country. Aravind Adiga
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. Georges Simenon, interview Paris Review summer 1955
What I have written I have written. John 19:22, Pilate
When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For aside from my evident inability to do anything great I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one’s heart and brings its own reward. L Frank Baum
That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters. Anthony Burgess, English Literature: A Survey for Students, 1958
In every man’s writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded. Thomas Carlyle, Goethe, 1828
Good writers indulge their audience; great writers know better. Tom Heehler, The Well-Spoken Thesaurus