131 Writing Quotes to share with friends and relatives

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. – Rainer Maria Rilke

Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such. – Samuel Butler

No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman. – Van Wyck Brooks

I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of [$hÂ¡t]. I try to put the [$hÂ¡t] in the wastebasket. – Ernest Hemingway

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. – Samuel Johnson

There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes. – William Makepeace Thackeray

Authorship is exhibitionism, and readers a species of voyeur. – Terri Guillemets

The majority of writers ought to translate themselves; there are but few thoughts that are born translated, that is, clothed with the power best fitted alike to express and transmit them. What we have in the first instance written for ourselves, should be written a second time for others. – Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847), Literature. First Section: Literature in Gene

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I would always be that same maddening, monstrous mixture of pedantry, egoism, politeness, selfishness, kindliness, sneakiness, larkiness, sociability, loneliness, ambition, ordered calm and hidden intensity. I would cover my life with words. I would spray the whole bloody world with words. – Stephen Fry (b.1957), Moab is my Washpot #INFJ

I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of William Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon. – Bill Hoest (1926–1988)