Writer Life Quotes

Writing changed my life. It has an existential dimension, and that's the same for every writer. Every artist has a moment of awakening, of happening upon an idea that grabs hold of you, regardless of whether you are a painter or a writer. ~ Imre Kertesz

Negative experiences repeat as long as they remain useful to you. ~ Tawny Lara

I'm a writer. Life is supposed to pass me by, while I watch it. ~ Nick Hornby

Advertising was only meant to be a very small part of my life. I had intended that I would work extensively in journalism for about five or six years and then I'd become a writer. ~ Bryce Courtenay

When I took off from Providence, my only professional aspiration was what it had always been: I wanted to be a sportscaster. By the time I landed in the desert, I knew I would spend the rest of my life trying to be a writer. ~ Mike Greenberg

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer. ~ Doris Lessing

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing. ~ Eugene Ionesco

You write. That's the hard bit that nobody sees. ~ Neil Gaiman

I have this desire to have this immaculate form of love that really doesn't exist, so my obsession goes on through life and I never find it and I end up miserable. But it makes me a better writer. ~ Angel Haze

He invented this idea of telling the life story of a great writer through becoming his characters and becoming him. It was such a pleasure and I thought we must find another writer. ~ Simon Callow

Every book contains a secret – even the writer doesn't always know what it is. ~ Carla H. Krueger

Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it's complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he's able to keep processing that as well. ~ V.S. Naipaul

The nice thing about publishing later in life is that you already know who you are. You don't have to hang out with the 'Paris Review' crowd to try to make yourself feel like a legitimate writer. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

I'm a compulsive storyteller, an avid reader, and have always nurtured the secret goal of spending my life as a writer. ~ Astro Teller

As I have encountered difficult moments in my own life, I have been privileged to learn from the great men I have come to know as a writer. ~ Candice Millard

There's a really nice moment in the life of a piece of writing where the writer starts to get a feeling of it outgrowing him - or he starts to see it having a life of its own that doesn't have anything to do with his ego or his desire to 'be a good writer.' ~ George Saunders

For a writer, life is always too short to write. I will just try my best during what remains of my life. ~ Yu Cao

There is no vacation for a writer! Every moment of his life is work! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I've always known what I'm meant to do. The path of my life has been about discovering what I need to do to support myself as a writer. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

[Cities] are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers. ~ Jane Jacobs

I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft as a writer. ~ Patti Smith

Vain the ambition of kings Who seek by trophies and dead things To leave a living name behind, And weave but nets to catch the wind. ~ John Webster

As a writer, if someone falls in love with my work, I know they have fallen in love with my mind. Having no idea what my face looks like, they chose my mind. Art may be the only place a woman can be whole without being seen. ~ Nayyirah Waheed

But it isn't about perfection, and it isn't about performance. You'll miss the richest moments in life - the sacred moments when we feel God's grace and presence through the actual faces and hands of the people we love - if you're too scared or too ashamed to open the door. ~ Shauna Niequist

I frequently look back at my life, searching for that fork in the road, trying to figure out where, exactly, I went bad and became a thrill-seeking, pleasure-hungry sensualist, always looking to shock, amuse, terrify and manipulate, seeking to fill that empty spot in my soul with something new. ~ Anthony Bourdain

I've never been called quiet about anything in my life. However, I'm also not one of those people who thinks that because I have been moderately successful at playing make believe for a living that I am supposed to tell you who to vote for. ~ Allen Covert

But me, not destined such delights to share,
My prime of life in wandering spent and care;
Impell'd, with steps unceasing, to pursue
Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies;
My fortune leads to traverse reams alone,
And find no spot of all the world my own. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

As we become obsessed with Jesus, we'll begin to reflect His image to those around us. Our speech will transform. Our character will look more like His. Why? Because our lives will always mirror the idols of our hearts. ~ Tessa Emily Hall

My interest in community is what fuels my work as a writer, more than just wanting to write or just wanting to have a TV show. ~ Jill Soloway

I can't do this without her, Liz, I can't. Every part of my life is wrapped up in her. She's my wife, ~ Tara Sivec

Those who have suffered in the hands of others,know what it is to be free. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I get my first paycheck. We are paid once a month, which requires the kind of budgeting I am incapable of. Life is unpleasant after the twenty-third or so. I've been a graduate student for so long it's hard to fathom that one check can have four numbers and change. Then I see how much The Man takes. Damn The Man. ~ Roxane Gay

Be enthusiastic about life. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

No matter how you run your race in life u can never be faster than tomorrow ~ Oluwatosin Thomas

Family itself is a "we" experience, a "we" mentality. And admittedly, the movement from "me" to "we" - from independence to interdependence - is perhaps one of the most challenging and difficult aspects of family life. ~ Stephen R. Covey

In East Sussex, let us say, an old farm sleeps in sun-dapple, its oast-house with its cowls echoing the distant steeple of SS Andrew and Mary, Fletching, where de Montfort had prayed and Gibbon now sleeps out a sceptic's eternity. The Sussex Weald is quiet now, its bows and bowmen that did affright the air at Agincourt long dust. A Chalk Hill Blue spreads peaceable wings upon the hedge. Easter is long sped, yet yellow and lavender yet ornament the land, in betony and dyer's greenweed and mallows. An inquisitive whitethroat, rejoicing in man's long opening of the Wealden country, trills jauntily from atop a wall. ~ G.M.W. Wemyss

I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of humankind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context. ~ Joseph Beuys

Everyone prioritizes. Everyone wants new jackets and new shoes and new cars and new houses and new caravans and new mountain cabins and new boats. But I don't. I buy books and records because they say something about what life is about, what it is to be a human here on earth. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Each person must implement their preferred problem solving method to address existential questions pertaining to life and death, living and loving, working and playing, resting and restructuring. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always try to be a little kinder than is necessary? ~ J.M. Barrie

Holy Spirit of God, thank You for filling my life with You. You are in control of all that I am - my thoughts, my actions, my words, and my feelings. Thank You, Spirit of God. I am now living under the downpour of Your power and strength and blessing, and I thank You for the riches of Your mercy. In the precious name of Jesus. Amen. ~ James MacDonald

The body can discern, to the finest degree, the difference between that which is supportive of life and that which is not. ~ David R. Hawkins

If I go a little over the top sometimes, don't worry; That's where all the sunshine is. ~ Michael Treanor

Maybe real-life Mom didn't vacuum the house flawlessly arrayed in pearls and a pleated shirt like the mother on leave it to beaver. Maybe she flirted with the milkman or waited for the kids to go to bed so she could hammer back a couple of mugs of vodka pretending it was tea. But she was there to greet us when we came home from school in the afternoon. She made us dinner, kept watch on us through the kitchen window, put Band-Aids on our scrapes and bruises.
She was Mom and that was no small thing. ~ Andrew Klavan

The big guys who ran things didn't want you thinking or feeling. It slowed down production. They wanted you scared and working so you wouldn't bump up against the truth
life could be fun. Yup, they wanted you scared. They wanted you grim. They wanted you madly cranking out Barbie dolls or Post Toasties or Xerox, or they wanted you overworked and underpaid at teaching so you could at least feel smart, and they wanted you to keep having kids so you'd have to keep working at whatever job you were stuck in and not have time to think or feel or, if you did, you certainly wouldn't have time to do anything about it, or even get close to the big fun, the fun that belonged only to them. And then they wanted your kids to hop on the same treadmill. ~ Bill Ripley

The principle of my political life ... is that all amelioration and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal course, and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be got by forcible means, such means create more evils than they cure, and leave the country worse than they found it. ~ Daniel O'Connell

I write, because not breathing is not an option. ~ Monice Mitchell Simms

I try to find a reason to laugh each day. Somehow, if you can incorporate laughter into your day, every day, it really helps. It's the little things in life that make me happy. ~ Faith Hill

Turn to philosophy, therefore, with all your soul, sit at her feet, cherish her; a great distance will then begin to separate you from other men. You will be far ahead of all mortals, and even the gods will not be far ahead of you. Do you ask what will be the difference between yourself and the gods? They will live longer. But, by my faith, it is the sign of a great artist to have confined a full likeness to the limits of a miniature. The wise man's life spreads out to him over as large a surface as does all eternity to a god. There is one point in which the sage has an advantage over the god; for a god is freed from terrors by the bounty of nature, the wise man by his own bounty. ~ Seneca.

To avoid the problems you face is to avoid the life you have to live. ~ Paulo Coelho

Though she knew his sins and shortcomings, she never judged. She forgave. She forgave unforgivable acts. She forgave a man who had never before been forgiven. It was more than that: she'd given him a child and a life. ~ Aleatha Romig

I will protect your sister and your vicious Grandmother with my life," Viper promised stiffly. ~ Anonymous

But what is your life? Can you see it? It vanishes at its own appearance. Moment by moment. Until it vanishes to appear no more. When you look at the world is there a point in time when the seen becomes the remembered? How are they separate? It is that which we have no way o show. It is that which is missing from our map and from the picture that it makes. And yet is all we have. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Photography is the only "language" understood in all parts of the world, and bridging all nations and cultures, it links the family of man. Independent of political influence - where people are free - it reflects truthfully life and events, allows us to share in the hopes and despair of others, and illuminates political and social conditions. We become the eye-witnesses of the humanity and inhumanity of mankind ... ~ Helmut Gernsheim

I do not love men: I love what devours them. ~ Andre Gide

All you have in life is your reputation: you may be very rich, but if you lose your good name, then you'll never be happy. The thought will always lurk at the back of your mind that people don't trust you. ~ Richard Branson

Whoever coined the phrase, I love you to death obviously never experienced the kind of love Tate and I share. If that were the case, the phrase would be I love you to life. Because that's exactly what Tate did. She loved me back to life. ~ Colleen Hoover

I walk with a dual longing
for life and for death. ~ Melissa Lee-Houghton

Whatever you do with your life-whatever you end up achieving or not achieving-the great gift you have in you to give to the world is the gift of who you alone are; your way of seeing things, and saying things, and feeling about things, that is like nobody else's. If so much as a single one of you were missing, there would be an empty place at the great feast of life that nobody else in all creation could fill. ~ Frederick Buechner