Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.
Virginia WoolfThe writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.
Karl MarxIt is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.
DiogenesYou know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.
Jimmy BuffettThat is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.
Kurt VonnegutWealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
EpictetusCan anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?
Ralph Waldo EmersonA good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
Friedrich NietzscheYou need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.
Margaret AtwoodI am not a consecutive writer.
Dr. Seuss‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.
Alice MunroFor 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 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 AusterThe 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’m not a playwright.
Bob DylanWhen a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.
Kurt VonnegutThe happiness and peace attained by those satisfied by the nectar of spiritual tranquillity is not attained by greedy persons restlessly moving here and there.
ChanakyaAny 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 BaldwinA state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.
PlatoThe environment that we call society is created by past generations; we accept it, as it helps us to maintain our greed, possessiveness, illusion.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiBut 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 KingI had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.
Haruki MurakamiI’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 AngelouMoney is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.
Arthur SchopenhauerAlthough I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.
George LucasI’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 ReyThe 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 ChurchillNext to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.
William Makepeace ThackerayMy dad is a great writer. Naturally talented, naturally charming. He embodies that back-in-the-day cool.
DrakeThe book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘
Paul AusterIf 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 BowieWe have observed that, in society and the world in which we live, selfishness has increased more than love for others, and that men of good will must work, each with his own strengths and expertise, to ensure that love for others increases until it is equal and possibly exceeds love for oneself.
Pope FrancisI don’t go around thinking I’m Ray Bradbury all the time.
Ray BradburyThere 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 HemingwaySelfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar WildeGenerally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.
Charles BukowskiWhere do the evils like corruption arise from? It comes from the never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and replace it with ‚what can I give‘ spirit.
A. P. J. Abdul KalamEvery man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.
Niccolo MachiavelliAnd as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.
Stephen KingAs far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.
Terry PratchettAnd 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 BuffettWho is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?
Kurt VonnegutAs 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 OceanI 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 AusterFor a creative writer possession of the ‚truth‘ is less important than emotional sincerity.
George OrwellIn college, I think I probably positioned myself as an aspiring writer, meaning I dressed sort of extravagantly and adopted all the semi-Byronic affectations, as if I were writing, although I wasn’t actually doing any writing.
Anthony BourdainDickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.
Terry PratchettI don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.
Haruki MurakamiI’ve been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.
Lana Del ReyI hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That’s the pitch. We’ll see.
Kurt VonnegutThere is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
Maya AngelouPoverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things.
Lucius Annaeus SenecaAll the time, I’ve felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn’t.
Christopher HitchensIn a higher phase of communist society… only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Karl MarxWe are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.
Stephen HawkingRead 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’m a writer. I don’t support any war. That’s my principle.
Haruki MurakamiSome critics will write ‚Maya Angelou is a natural writer‘ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.
Maya AngelouI guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I’m a writer… I write.
David Bowie