Great Writers quotes:

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Great writers are the saints for the godless. -- Anita Brookner
We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter -- Allen Ginsberg
I'm not a great writer. I'm a great rewriter. -- Paddy Chayefsky
Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright. -- Aaron Sorkin
A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to. -- Tom Bissell
I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed. -- Gertrude Stein
Great writers arrive among us like new diseases - threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible. -- Craig Raine
I am hoping that I can be known as a great writer and actor some day, rather than a sex symbol. -- Steven Seagal
When I hear of the destruction of a species, I feel just as if all the works of some great writer have perished. -- Theodore Roosevelt
It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts. -- Gustave Flaubert
Television in the last few years has been where all the great writers are going. TV now is what indie film used to be. -- Jeff Daniels
In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are. -- Gore Vidal
You hear all this whining going on, 'Where are our great writers?' The thing I might feel doleful about is: 'Where are the readers?' -- Gore Vidal
A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer. -- Bill Gates
Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening. -- Roger Rosenblatt
To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator. -- Marcel Proust
A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist. -- Anthony Burgess
great writers are indecent people they live unfairly saving the best part for paper. good human beings save the world so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal. if you read this after I am dead it means I made it. -- Charles Bukowski
King Arthur and his armored goons of the Round Table functioned as the Politburo of a slave state: Camelot. Of all who have written on the Matter of Arthur, from Malory to White, only Mark Twain understood this. But Mark Twain was a great writer. -- Edward Abbey
Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath or a portrait of the devil; but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That's because only a real artist knows the anatomy of the terrible, or the physiology of fear. -- H. P. Lovecraft
Mediocre writers borrow; great writers steal. -- T. S. Eliot
Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy -- W. Somerset Maugham
Our great American writers were all newspaper people. -- John Gould
All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour. -- Ben Kingsley
The children of great authors do not, as a rule, become writers. -- Robert Green Ingersoll
The great writers are great as they have big workshop of imagination. -- Kishore Bansal
There are dozens of great American writers who write about the family. -- William Nicholson
Twitter... 140 character limit... must be a great tool for fortune cookie writers.. -- E.A. Bucchianeri
All great writers begin with a good leather binding and a respectable title. -- James M. Barrie
It's no use imagining that bringing great writers together inevitably precipitates great conversation. -- Edward St Aubyn
Many writers profess great exactness in punctuation who never yet made a point. -- George D. Prentice
The Shield made me realize there were great opportunities for writers in TV. -- Nick Antosca
There's a great myth about cartoonists, writers and people that are on TV. -- Shel Silverstein
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither. -- Gore Vidal
I'm sure there are writers who are great businessmen, but I never met any. -- Arthur Miller
Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. -- Steven Pressfield
Great writers leave us not just their works, but a way of looking at things. -- Elizabeth Janeway
The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves. -- Irwin Shaw
The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well. -- Elias Canetti
I often felt myself to be an outsider, which is great training for all writers. -- Karen Russell
Ed Wood served a great purpose - mainly making writers feel better about their work. -- R. K. Milholland
I was a pretty good fighter. But it was the writers who made me great. -- Jack Dempsey
Writers are always a great nuisance to publishers. If they could do without them, they would. -- Fay Weldon
Live an interesting life. Meet people. Read a lot and widely, learn from the great writers -- Michael Morpurgo
Are there any writers on the literary scene whom I consider truly great? Yes: Truman Capote. -- Truman Capote
Live an interesting life. Meet people. Read a lot and widely, learn from the great writers. -- Michael Morpurgo
I have great respect for children. And I have great respect for their ability as writers. -- Patricia MacLachlan
The wonderful fortune of some writers deludes and leads to misery a great number of young people. -- Jean Antoine Petit-Senn
All great literary works influence us as writers, not their stories as much as their storytelling ability. -- Michael Scott
Let's face it, the great comedians now that are handicapped in the looks department are tremendous writers. -- Jack Black
Don't be discouraged if you think you're not a great writer because terrible writers are successful in Hollywood -- David Seltzer
Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever. -- Zadie Smith
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Great writers arrive among us like new diseases threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible. -- Craig Raine
Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind. -- Edmund Burke
Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Talking to all those great writers and artists for the magazine was a form of graduate school for me. -- Christopher Bollen
Great writers say things that are so beautiful, the very act of repeating them makes life itself more beautiful. -- Joe Queenan
Great writers are not those who tell us we shouldn't play with fire, but those who make our fingers burn. -- Stephen Vizinczey
It's hard to resist the magical thinking that the work habits of great writers are the key to their greatness. -- ZoÃ« Heller
It's hard to resist the magical thinking that the work habits of great writers are the key to their greatness. -- ZoÃ« Heller
I am madness maddened when it comes to books, writers, and the great granary silos where their wits are stored. -- Ray Bradbury
Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision. -- Norman Mailer
Above all things-read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied. -- Ngaio Marsh
There can be no great literature in America until her writers have learned to trust her implicitly and love her devoutly. -- Ernest Hemingway
I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work. -- Natalie Goldberg
The great wisdom for writers, perhaps for everybody, is to come to understand to be at one with their own tempo. -- Alan Hollinghurst
I had a great childhood. I think writers are always better off when they have more twisted childhoods, but I didn't. -- Anthony Shadid
I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various -- Irwin Shaw
A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors. -- Jay McInerney
Not being published would be great. When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane. -- Kate Atkinson
Writers sometimes are paid a great deal of money, but much more frequently they're not paid or are paid only a little bit. -- Alice Mattison
Great orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct shadows to the generations following them. The spell vanishes with the voice. -- Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Great writers zealously learn the craft of their profession so they can release the power and the depth of their imagination and experience. -- Leonard Bishop
Great writers know what to cut out. It's the same in life. Clear ambitions. Clear relationships. This is the stuff of good story. -- Donald Miller
Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. -- Samuel Johnson
Sometimes writers of no talent at all can write great acting scenes. Sometimes the very best writers can't write scenes that come to life. -- Anita Loos
The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination. -- James A. Michener
My best advice for writers is: Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly - all these make for great stories. -- Chuck Palahniuk
The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public. -- Robert Green Ingersoll
I knew Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were really talented. As actors, they were both studly young men, and they had great writers' chops. -- Robin Williams
I gave Joss Whedon and Judd Apatow their first writing jobs, as well as many other untried writers who went on to great success. -- Roseanne Barr
You don't that often see writers being sought out when there are matters of great moment to discuss. And I think that's a loss. -- Salman Rushdie
There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves. -- Clifton Fadiman
I'm pleased to have outsold great writers. But I'm not insane - I realize I am a writer people buy to take on vacation. -- Maeve Binchy
What great comedians, great comic writers, great comic actors do is that they just read the headlines with the right eyebrow position and it's funny. -- David Salle
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In pure literature, the writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought. -- Lytton Strachey
Something taken off the page can sound great, I guess. Usually it doesn't. It seems like lately Pitchfork is trying to champion lyric writers more. -- Stephen Malkmus
It is also the fate of leadership to be misunderstood. For historians, academics, writers and journalists to reflect great lives according to their own subjective canon. -- Nelson Mandela
The blog is certainly another tool for writers out there to break their way in. But being a blogger does not make you a great writer. -- Julie Powell
I've never felt grounded because of my ancestry or my gender. I think until women get away from that they're not going to be great writers. -- Patti Smith
The great leaders of business, industry and finance, and the great artists, poets, musicians and writers all became great because they developed the power of self-motivation . -- Napoleon Hill
I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I musn't say this, I like many of them, a great many of my friends are writers. -- Sylvia Plath
I hate to see great writers like Ringel and Ansen and Jan Stuart (among many others) being put out to pastures because print media is suffering. -- Alonso Duralde
They are very good reasons why voice acting in games can be so terrible. Writers are in a great position to be able to bridge this gap. -- Rhianna Pratchett
Canada has always been a great place for literature. It's strong and growing stronger, and there will always be reading, and there will always be great writers. -- Ruth Ozeki
Living in New York City is one constant, ongoing literary pilgrimage. For 20 years, I lived among the ghosts of great writers and walked where they had walked. -- Kate Christensen
Stargate by far is the top of the pile when it comes to Sci-Fi. The quality is great. They have really good writers, production design, lighting, wardrobe. -- Corin Nemec
For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones. -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I'm such a huge fan of fan fiction, to me it's a great way for readers to become writers. It's like putting the training wheels on for writing. -- Hugh Howey
Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech. -- Thornton Wilder
[Television] is a great medium for writers, because there's just no time for a studio to interfere very long. You write it, you shoot it; it's on TV. -- Tina Fey
A lot of writers and artists are like chefs who eat their own cooking in the kitchen and then deliver an empty plate with assurances that it's great. -- Peter Schjeldahl
It is fascinating to me that when the lists of the great writers are trotted out year after year, you often find lists without a single woman mentioned. -- Siri Hustvedt
Futurism today is led by science-fiction writers, by sociologists, by historians. Now, I have nothing against them. I'm sure they do great work. But they're not scientists. They're clueless. -- Michio Kaku
I was intoxicated by the romantic poetry of our great writers. I arranged the world according to my private use, looking at it through the poems I had devoured. -- Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont
I have a lot of respect for people who are great at ad-libbing, and for writers and directors who are able to create a scene in which that works. -- Aaron Sorkin
And if you want to know why great editors scare the pants off of writers everywhere, read 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss. The punctuation police are everywhere! -- Dorothea Benton Frank
Some writers achieve great popularity and then disappear forever. The bestseller lists of the past fifty years are, with a few lively exceptions, a sombre graveyard of dead books. -- Carlos Fuentes
I think it's probably better to make a region your own, and then maybe you can go somewhere else, but a lot of great writers have stuck to one region. -- Tom Barbash
Insofar as we, critics of the black tradition, master our craft, we serve both to preserve our own traditions and to shape their direction. All great writers demand great critics. -- Henry Louis Gates
The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. -- Alexis de Tocqueville
If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English. -- Elliott Colla
I was very pleased, obviously, to have outsold great writers. But I'm not insane - I do realise that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation. -- Maeve Binchy
I was very pleased, obviously, to have outsold such great writers. But I'm not insane - I do realize that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation. -- Maeve Binchy
There are damn few great writers and I'm not one of them. While I could afford to I played with words. When I could no longer afford that I wrote for money. -- Rex Stout
Deirdre Maddon has an extraordinary, almost celestial way of telling a story. There are so many great writers now - although I also want to go back and read all of Dickens again. -- Rebecca Miller
But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living. -- Fay Godwin
I think great writers should write great shows, and I have trouble with, like, what you are in life shouldn't automatically make you what you do in your art. It doesn't necessarily translate. -- Jenji Kohan

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