I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.
Paulo CoelhoI had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.
Haruki MurakamiWe like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.
Stephen KingYou know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.
Jimmy BuffettI knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.
Paul AusterIt is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.
Vincent Van GoghSome critics will write ‚Maya Angelou is a natural writer‘ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.
Maya AngelouIt was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.
Kurt VonnegutI hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That’s the pitch. We’ll see.
Kurt VonnegutAny writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.
James BaldwinAlthough I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.
George LucasI’m not a playwright.
Bob DylanI alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.
Robert FrostI’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.
J. K. RowlingStyle is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.
Robert FrostFor a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
Ernest HemingwayI’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.
Anthony BourdainI began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you’d quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.
Haruki MurakamiStand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting. But you can go from acting to being a TV personality to being a radio personality to being a writer to being a producer, to just being a visionary, to voiceover work.
Kevin HartI am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.
Robert FrostThe responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
James BaldwinIf you appear in the ‚Atlantic‘ or ‚Harper’s‘ or the ‚New Yorker,‘ by God, you must be a writer, because everybody says so.
Kurt VonnegutIt was 1996 and I was at a crossroads in my career. I had been working in Hollywood as a writer and was very unhappy. I had pitched an idea for a book some six months earlier, and the book packager, Joost Elffers, wanted me to write up a treatment for it.
Robert GreeneI’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.
Maya AngelouA true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.
Joseph AddisonIf 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.
David BowieI don’t think of myself as a metafictional writer at all. I think of myself as a classic writer, a realist writer, who tends to have flights of fancy at times, but nevertheless, my feet are mostly on the ground.
Paul AusterI don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.
Haruki MurakamiSometimes I wonder why I’m a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I’m a successful writer.
Haruki MurakamiAs a writer, as a creator, I’m giving you my experiences. But just take what I give you. You ain’t got to pry beyond that.
Frank OceanIn utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
John SteinbeckWhen younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.
Maya AngelouThe reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
Winston ChurchillI’m first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can’t say why I’m one.
Paulo CoelhoThere are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
Ernest HemingwayI’m a writer first and a singer second.
Lana Del ReyThe writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.
Karl MarxYou have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.
Haruki MurakamiBut I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.
Stephen KingThe writer must be a participant in the scene… like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.
Hunter S. ThompsonI am not a consecutive writer.
Dr. SeussI’m a writer first and a singer second. And then I started editing my own videos when I was 17, so it’s a process I’ve been doing since I was younger.
Lana Del ReyAnd you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.
Jimmy BuffettIf you wish to be a writer, write.
EpictetusI’m a writer. I don’t support any war. That’s my principle.
Haruki MurakamiFor a creative writer possession of the ‚truth‘ is less important than emotional sincerity.
George OrwellIn my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.
Charles BukowskiWhen writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
Ernest HemingwayEvery writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.
Haruki MurakamiIn Hollywood, they think they know it all. You, as a writer, are essentially an outsider. Novelists and short-story writers, especially.
Ray BradburyMy dad is a great writer. Naturally talented, naturally charming. He embodies that back-in-the-day cool.
DrakeWe are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
Henry David ThoreauI was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.
Alice WalkerThe writer’s greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.
James BaldwinYou need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.
Margaret AtwoodI don’t go around thinking I’m Ray Bradbury all the time.
Ray BradburyEvery secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.
Virginia WoolfRead with care, George Orwell’s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.
Christopher HitchensI hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
John SteinbeckA good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
Friedrich Nietzsche