Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.
Isaac Asimov
Related Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He ... GORE VIDAL Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the dispo... ERNEST HEMINGWAY If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows an... ERNEST HEMINGWAY No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendenc... ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also ... JORGE LUIS BORGES When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a c... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Gordie is a pleasure to be around as a writer. He isn't the type to write safe (lyrics) or work with... GEORGE CANYON Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means. Even the fastidious and unhappy who cann... G.K. CHESTERTON Now a writer can make himself a nice career while he is alive by espousing a political cause, workin... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fa... ROALD DAHL It is a lie. ARTHUR MILLER Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play. J.R. RIM A writer reports on the universe. When he presents his credentials, the gates of heaven and hell are... BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy. E. B. WHITE A writer is justly called 'universal' when he is understood within the limits of his civiliz... GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY Jesse is on some other planet. He is something else. He goes fast and strong and is so surprising. H... DAVE COLLEY The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself... MARY ROBERTS RINEHART To finish is a sadness to a writer - a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. Bu... JOHN STEINBECK If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows a... ERNEST HEMINGWAY When a writer is already stretching the bounds of reality by writing within a science fiction or fan... JANE LINDSKOLD I devoutly believe it is the writer who has matured the film medium more than anyone else in Hollywo... DUDLEY NICHOLS It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the wo... JOYCE CAROL OATES A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is whe... DIANE JOHNSON No matter how far he can go in his entire life.
No matter how much he can achieve in his entire life... KAZERONNIE MAK Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He i... HENRY MILLER His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone ha... TEKOA MANNING A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because... JUNOT DIAZ Life is a re-discovery. BRIAN BLESSED If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hr... WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the... ERNEST HEMINGWAY A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is... DIANE JOHNSON Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destructi... MICHAEL CHABON Because of this, my son is left without a father. If he felt his life was in danger, he has no busin... LUZ MARTINEZ A writer gets to live yet another life every time he or she creates a new story. PAWAN MISHRA A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer. He is a man who has signed a c... ANTON CHEKHOV The writer's curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored. CRISS JAMI Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a b... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that ... WALLACE STEGNER The writer needs to react to his or her own internal universe, to his or her own point of view. If h... MANUEL PUIG The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns. WOLE SOYINKA If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledg... MICKEY SPILLANE To search the sands of a lost desert for truth and justice in this world today you might as well be ... GARY F EVANS... A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master e... ROALD DAHL A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a ... CARLOS RUIZ ZAFóN If you think that life is a celebration full of party poppers and merry go rounds it's not it's a ga... GARY F EVANS... Life Is a Misconception. DEYTH BANGER Life is a desire! DEYTH BANGER He did tell me that 'In Cold Blood' scraped him down to the marrow of his bones. That's how he phras... GERALD CLARKE A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to. TOM BISSELL A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls ... CHARLES PEGUY There is a saying: If a tiger comes down off his mountain and goes to the lowlands, he will be caugh... THICH NHAT HANH You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has ama... JUNOT DíAZ A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't te... JOHN STEINBECK What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of acciden... EDWARD DAHLBERG She gets a man who will love her completely and faithfully. She gets a man who will not only save he... QUINN LOFTIS Whenever anyone reads his words the writer is there. He lives in his readers. WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS [One letter writer said Hunter may turn out to be the most famous Kelly, even more so than his fathe... JIM KELLY When a writer knows home in his heart, his heart must remain subtly apart from it. He must always be... WILLIAM MORRIS I think every professor and writer is in some way an exhibitionist because his or her normal activit... UMBERTO ECO Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover ... EDNA FERBER The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is ... IRWIN SHAW I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science f... KURT VONNEGUT It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereas the wri... WILLIAM BERNBACH For me, my life is a journey. JAY ELECTRONICA There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a uni... SAMUEL GOMPERS Wait until it warms up. He's a feel pitcher. He feels the ball. When he feels the humidity on the ba... GUY CONTI If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, d... JOYCE CAROL OATES Mother Superior jump the gun... -The Beatles, Happiness is a Warm Gun LAUREN MYRACLE Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause... EUDORA WELTY It can be depressing when no one takes interest, and a lack of response makes the writer question wh... ELIZABETH CLEMENTS The power of a writer is that he is a god of sorts. He can create his own worlds and populate them w... BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The digni... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Everyone thinks they can be a writer. Most people don't understand what's involved. The real writers... PETER MCWILLIAMS Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of ins... ANNE LAMOTT Life is a risk. CARMELO ANTHONY If you're a writer in Dublin and you write a snatch of dialogue, everyone thinks you lifted it from ... RODDY DOYLE That's one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He... RAYMOND CHANDLER Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his me... HENRY W. FOWLER Quotation ... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his m... HENRY W. FOWLER I thought I would write a love letter. But then, I wrote a book." - Suzy Davies, on "Johari's Window SUZY DAVIES You know when a person goes into the ring to win, or at least not to lose. I mean, when a fighter is... FEDOR EMELIANENKO What every man needs, regardless of his job or the kind of work he is doing, is a vision of what his... JOSEPH MORRELL DODGE What every man needs, regardless of his job or the kind of work he is doing, is a vision of what his... JOSEPH M. DODGE What a writer's message is is totally unimportant. Either he is agreeing with life by affirming,... STANLEY ELKIN The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the ma... ISADORA DUNCAN If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so. ANDRE GIDE If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so ANDRE GIDE Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular w... MARTIN AMIS The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps. ROBERT BENCHLEY What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is ... PABLO PICASSO He is the most effective, not when he's scoring, but when he gets other people involved. He demands ... CARON BUTLER No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's i... WILLIAM FAULKNER When the amateur writer lets a bad sentence stand in his final draft, though he knows its bad, the... J. GARDNER Life is a matter of courtship and wooing, flirting and chatting. CAROLYN SEE Quoting from Thomas Merton Dialogues With Silence The true contemplative is not one who pr... STEPHEN COPE
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ISAAC ASIMOV It is a curious fact that innumerable readers have asked me if I wrote this story. They seem never t... ISAAC ASIMOV When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly s... ISAAC ASIMOV The vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do tha... ISAAC ASIMOV Night was a wonderful time in Brooklyn in the 1930s. Air conditioning was unknown except in movie ho... ISAAC ASIMOV Then Priss arrived, dragging a volume of colorlessness in with him, a drabness that was unaffected b... ISAAC ASIMOV And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think tha... ISAAC ASIMOV A horse having a wolf as a powerful and dangerous enemy lived in constant fear of his life. Being dr... ISAAC ASIMOV Encyclopedias don’t win wars. ISAAC ASIMOV Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn’t say one damned thing, and said it so you... 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ISAAC ASIMOV Mr Baley", said Quemot, "you can't treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic... ISAAC ASIMOV Carbon is the basis of human life and iron of robot life. It becomes easy to speak of C/Fe when you ... ISAAC ASIMOV History was interesting to the extent that it was catastrophic and, while that might make absorbing ... ISAAC ASIMOV I would argue that a truly developed country would be beyond Presidents and Kings. In a world with s... ISAAC ASIMOV Any technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so (even more so)... ISAAC ASIMOV Imagine that. Terrible, terrible, the way we have all bent to the yoke; the affection we have for th... ISAAC ASIMOV It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No... ISAAC ASIMOV violence is the last resource of incompetence ISAAC ASIMOV All roads lead to Trantor, and that is where all stars end. ISAAC ASIMOV Goodbye, Hari, my love. Remember always--all you did for me.” -I... ISAAC ASIMOV Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, si... ISAAC ASIMOV A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of consi... ISAAC ASIMOV A couple of months ago I had a dream, which I remember with the utmost clarity. (I don't usually rem... ISAAC ASIMOV There was no doubt about it: the City was the culmination of man’s mastery over the environment. N... ISAAC ASIMOV If I am right, then [religious fundamentalists] will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. I... ISAAC ASIMOV That we have come as far as we have in forty years [the 1930s to the 1970s] is hopeful, though I bel... ISAAC ASIMOV University President: Why is it that you physicists always require so much expensive equipment? Now ... ISAAC ASIMOV A poor idea well written is more likely to be accepted than a good idea poorly written ISAAC ASIMOV A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First o... ISAAC ASIMOV The trouble is that racial stereotypes, unfavourable to everyone but white men of northwest European... ISAAC ASIMOV To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to... ISAAC ASIMOV A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. [Th... ISAAC ASIMOV I am the beneficiary of a lucky break in the genetic sweepstakes. ISAAC ASIMOV Nunca dejes que la moral te impida dejar de hacer lo que está bien ISAAC ASIMOV It's not so much what you have to learn if you accept weird theories, it's what you have to unlearn ISAAC ASIMOV The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eure... ISAAC ASIMOV To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. ISAAC ASIMOV