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A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.
-Anatole France
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Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
-Benjamin Franklin
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Our work is to present things that are as they are.
-Frederick the Great
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Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.
-Sigmund Freud
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By its very nature, the novel indicates that we are becoming. There is no final solution. There is no last word.
-Carlos Fuentes
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The walls are the publishers of the poor.
-Eduardo Galeano
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The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.
-Edward Gibbon
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It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
-Edward Gibbon
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Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.
-Andre Gide
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Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
-Andre Gide
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-Andre Gide
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Before I explain my book to others, I expect them to explain it to me. To claim to explain it first is to immediately narrow down its reach; for if we know what we intended to say, we do not know whether we said only that. - One always says more than THAT. - And what interests me most is what I put in without knowing, - that unconscious share, which I would like to call God's share.
-Andre Gide
Paludes Marshlands
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All these books have lived together ... inside my mind. They follow one another only on paper and because of an utter impossibility to let themselves be all written at the same time. Whatever book I write, I never devote myself to it completely, and the matter which most insistently requires me soon later develops, however, at the other end of me.
-Andre Gide
Journal, September-October 1909
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If any man wishes to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts.
-Johann von Goethe
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Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
-Johann von Goethe
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He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.
-Johann von Goethe
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A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.
-Johann von Goethe
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The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.
-William Golding
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Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.
-William Golding
Rough Magic Lecture, February 16, 1977
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A writer should be a joyous optimist. Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer.
-George Gribbon
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I don't regard Brecht as a man of iron-gray purpose and intellect, I think he is a theatrical whore of the first quality.
-Sir Peter Hall
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Whatever an author puts between the two covers of his book is public property; whatever of himself he does not put there is his private property, as much as if he had never written a word.
-Gail Hamilton
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If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.
-Peter Handke
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The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning.
-Vaclav Havel
Disturbing the Peace, ch. 2 (1986; tr. 1990)
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It was a folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age; or to insist on creating a semblance of a world out of airy matter . . . This wiser effort would have been, to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus make it a bright transparency . . . to seek resolutely the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents and ordinary characters with which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me was dull and commonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall ever write was there . . . These perceptions came too late . . . I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all.
-Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter
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Books about Authors & Writing
