A good writer is basically a story-teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
There are two kinds of writers - the great ones who can give you truths, and the lesser ones, who can only give you themselves.
Clifton Fadiman
The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.
Thomas Wolfe
Every writer, without exception, is a masochist, a sadist, a peeping Tom, an exhibitionist, a narcissist, an injustice collector and a depressed person constantly haunted by fears of unproductivity.
Edmund Bergler
The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book, I assure you.
Samuel Johnson
Writers are the engineers of human souls.
Joseph Stalin
The writer is committed when he plunges to the very depths of himself with the intent to disclose, not his individuality, but his person in the complex society that conditions and supports him.
Jean-Paul Sartre
The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it.
Ernest Hemingway
There is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.
Joan Didion
An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
Francois Rene De Chateaubriand
Every writer has to make an emotional journey from artist sitting in attic to being part of a business. The writer of a film is like Tinkerbell. You are only there because people believe in you. The moment they don't, because you're a pain the arse, you've lost.
Julian Fellowes
I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.
Robert Frost
The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
Cyril Connolly