Literary Writing Quotes: top 69 famous quotes about Literary Writing

Literary Writing Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Literary Writing quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

Since I make my living as a literary journalist, not a book scout, I spend inordinate amounts of time either reading or writing. — Michael Dirda

Fine writing is a distinct disadvantage. So is unique literary style. They take attention from the subject — Claude C. Hopkins

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.
[Time Magazine, October 31, 1977] — John Osborne

I don't just want a gripping story line. I shoot for the three dimensional literary Braille to a silent Scorsese movie — Carl Henegan

Verbose is not a synonym for literary. — Constance Hale

Your page stands against you and says to you that you are a thief. — Marcus Valerius Martialis

Writing a book is like dating. It's exciting. It's dreamy. And after four years, I just want to end it. — Carole Radziwill

Question: You're 21-years-old, a young adult writing mature adult literary fiction. Imaj: Yes, I feel creativity is an ageless thing. — Imaj

Suspense doesn't always have to be about physical danger. Making the reader worry is a universal concept that can be applied to any story. — Sandy Vaile

I was writing fiction steadily, but I found that the stark determinisms of code were a welcome relief from the ambiguities of literary narrative. — Vikram Chandra

No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. — Haruki Murakami

Reading literary works enlightened and sheltered me; now I'm paying back by writing.

--"My Confession — Zoe S. Roy

All good writers are thieves. The best get away with a heist. — Michael Stutz

Hone your writing skills as if they were your finest weapons of war. For in the literary arena, your pen will truly be your sword. — Max Hawthorne

I wrote much because I was paid little. I had no great desire to leave a literary name behind me. — Anthony Burgess

Life will be empty without great stories to read. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Messages are the death of an honest literary transaction with children — Maurice Sendak

I'm not a literary writer who is wedded to notions of realism and fiction. I believe that you can write anything if you can feel it convincingly. — Christopher Rice

When I finally find that one willing agent, I'll have found my prize in the Cracker Jack box. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form. — Sue Grafton

I understand now that a Trojan of literary achievement writes out of passion, out of necessity. — Merce Cardus

If you can't write, read.
If you can't read, walk.
Or walk and read, then write. — Joyce Rachelle

The farther away you get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources. — Nelson Algren

Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing. — Donald Hall

Literary theories will not make a writer write. — Allen Wier

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. — Samuel Johnson

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic. — Shelley Berman

Writing is not a literary act but spiritual. And pastoring is not managing a religious business but a spiritual quest. — Eugene H. Peterson

We all have a book in us. The first step is recognising this. Writing it is a whole new journey. — Kathryn Joyce

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it. — George Bernard Shaw

George Orwell is a pinnacle writer, for his combination of moral insight and literary writing. — Atul Gawande

I resisted children's writing for a long time. I saw myself as a writer of literary fiction. But I had so much more fun writing kids' books. — Ellen Potter

If you write a screenplay that gets circulated, you have a bigger readership than any literary novelist. And it's an educated audience as well. — William Monahan

I still write in literary Arabic but I try to rid it of the rhetoric, the symbolism, and the stuff that ordinary people don't understand. — Hassan Blasim

On writing: I don't like doing this, but it feels so good when I stop. — Richard Ford

A literary agent is nothing but a cheap salesman (or woman); while a writer is a cheap salesman (or woman) who also has to actually write the books. — John Hodgman

Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form. — Paul Gauguin

Suspense: the only literary tool that has any effect upon tyrants and savages. — E. M. Forster

Writing poetry is the only form of literary labour which gives me entire satisfaction. — Peter Porter

Local markets for literary fiction remain underdeveloped; the metropolis often holds out the only real possibility of a professional writing career. — Pankaj Mishra

A few hints as to literary craftsmanship may be useful to budding historians. First and foremost, get writing! — Samuel Eliot Morison

I love pop culture
the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that.
That's why I said I don't like elitism. — Haruki Murakami

It is a lie to write in such way as to be rewarded by fame offered you by some snobbish quasi-literary groups in the intellectual gazettes. — Ray Bradbury

I have no doubt at all the Devil grins,
As seas of ink I spatter.
Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins
The other kind don't matter. — Robert W. Service

If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, 'When you're ready'. — David Mitchell

I've always felt that good writing does not have to be literary. — Sara Sheridan

I was a businessman for 16 years of my life, so when I started writing, I wanted to keep my literary identity separate. — Ashwin Sanghi

Punctuation was, it is sad to say, invented a very long time ago. Even more frustrating, it has remained with us ever since. — Anne Elizabeth Moore

Regardless of the popular literary trend of the times, write the thing which lies close to your heart. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

The story we write today will support the next generation. — Lailah Gifty Akita

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something. — H.L. Mencken

While he sweated out a story she bled put a poem. (Dark City Lights) — S.J. Rozan

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting. — Arthur Schopenhauer

I write across several genres. I'm a slut for words. I can't keep it in my literary pants. — Fierce Dolan

Forget ideas, Mr. Author.
What kind of pen do you use? — Stephen Fry

Three Rules for Literary Success: 1. Read a lot.
2. Write a lot. 3. Read a lot more, write a lot more. — Robert Silverberg

The dilemma for women - writing after everything else was finished - has prevented women from reaching their literary potential for centuries. — Joan M. Drury

As an outsider I was free to pick my own literary traditions, to build my own system of literary values. — Dubravka Ugresic

The centuries are sprinkled with rare magic
with divine creatures
who help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us — Charles Bukowski

Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot obstruct. — Samuel Johnson

Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear. — Patricia Fuller

Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them. — Flannery O'Connor

Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces. — Allegra Goodman

[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it! — Terry Pratchett

The mainstream of literary culture in the U.K. is very averse to writing about technology. — Nick Harkaway

A funny little literary article in the hand is worth at least three Critiques of Pure Reason in the bush. — Aldous Huxley

I'm working when I'm fighting with my wife. I constantly ask myself-how can I use this stuff to literary advantage. — Art Buchwald

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent. — Nelson Algren

I don't know any writers who don't drink. — James Baldwin