Writer Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old writer quotes, writer sayings, and writer proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

If you want to find out what a writer or a cartoonist really feels, look at his work. That's enough. Shel Silverstein
The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it Karl Marx
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers. Logan Pearsall Smith
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist Vladimir Nabokov
A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit. Richard Bach
A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Thomas Mann
For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word. Catherine Drinker Bowen
Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read. Jorge Luis Borges
A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here Quentin Tarantino
My goal as a writer is more to comfort than to disturb. Joni Mitchell
Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works. Virginia Woolf
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. Toni Morrison
Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life. Hunter S. Thompson
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. Ray Bradbury
Style means the right word. The rest matters little. Jules Renard
To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive. William Zinsser