Writerly Quotes & Sayings

Savoring good prose is not just a more effective way to develop a writerly ear than obeying a set of commandments; it's a more inviting one. — Steven Pinker

I think it's fair to say I am a writer. I'm using this journal to get better: to hone my skills, to collect details and observations. To show don't tell and all that other writerly crap. — Gillian Flynn

My style is colloquial storytelling. It's the way we tell stories to one another - it's not writerly, it's not overdone. — James Patterson

I was treated once more to a novelist's valuable lesson, however - in apprehending that one's perception of plot and character are influenced entirely by one's own experience. To hear Mary tell the story of our Christmas at The Vyne, one would have thought that she was hounded by violence from first to last - perceived more than anybody of the nature of the probable murderer - and barely escaped with her life. It was a lesson in writerly humility. We are each the heroines of our own lives. — Stephanie Barron

If you're part of any kind of writerly community, some of those people will have gone through MFA programs, and their thinking leaks into yours. So whatever changes MFAs have made to the culture, it's to the culture as a whole. It can't be pinned down to individual books in a way that some people would like to do. — Chad Harbach

Much advice on writing has the tone of moral counsel, as if being a good writer will make you a better person. Unfortunately for cosmic justice, many gifted writers are scoundrels, and many inept ones are the salt of the earth. But the imperative to overcome the curse of knowledge may be the bit of writerly advice that comes closest to being sound moral advice: always try to lift yourself out of your parochial mindset and find out how other people think and feel. It may not make you a better person in all spheres of life, but it will be a source of continuing kindness to your readers. — Steven Pinker

People used to expect literary novels to deepen the experience of living; now they are happy with any sustained display of writerly cleverness. — Brian Reynolds Myers

One thing that's always helped quell my writerly anxieties is seeking out interviews with writers I admire. — Molly Antopol

I love writing on trains. The joy of being a writer is it's all in your head; you don't need materials apart from the laptop. It's like taking your work home with you, so you can feel grounded in your own insane writerly realities wherever you are. — Sadie Jones

The concept of a writer writing a vivid and accurate scene in a language transparent and devoid of decoration so that we see through to the object without writerly distraction suffers the same contradiction as the concept of a painter painting a vivid and accurate scene with pigments transparent and devoid of color, including white and black - so that the paint will not get between us and the picture. — Samuel R. Delany

If someone should ask, "how should an Opposition function?" the best answer would be, "in the manner of a traditional mother-in-law who watches the performance of household work by a daughter-in-law and follows her about with her comments. — R.K. Narayan

I don't do all that well in the writerly world. I'm happier being outside the flow. — Nicholson Baker

If I don't write it, they can't buy it. — Connie Cox

I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns. — Anne Tyler

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel. — Chuck Palahniuk

I've noticed over the past years of my writerly life that women writers in particular are discouraged in cleverly disguised forms from including the intellectual in their creative material way more than you would believe. — Lidia Yuknavitch

Writing nonfiction means I tell people's stories for them, not because they're special but because we all are. — Jo Deurbrouck

My writerly aspirations are pretty simple: to provide as many readers as possible with the same sort of wonderful immersion that I myself get from fantasy novels - and to make enough money to help feed my kids while doing so. — Saladin Ahmed

The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass. — R.K. Narayan

I would trade any writerly success if it would mean my children would be happy. — Mary Gordon

Keep Reading.
Keep Writing.
Keep Pushing yourself!
And never stop learning!
We writerly types have to stick together mostly because everybody else thinks we're "weird". — Darynda Jones

Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don't get all writerly: 'He opened the door.' There, it's open. — Amy Hempel

No one ever accepts criticism so cheerfully. Neither the man who utters it nor the man who invites it really means it. — R.K. Narayan

When it grows dark, we always need someone. This thought, the product of anxiety, only comes to me in the evenings, just when I'm about to end my writerly explorations. — Enrique Vila-Matas

We always question the bonafides of the man who tells us unpleasant facts. — R.K. Narayan

I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very writerly thing to do, but my mind doesn't work that way. I tend to get the idea for a novel in a big splash. — Zadie Smith

Big, evocative words get thrown around, and people can sing along to passionately as if the lyrics just materialized out of the ether, largely because they don't ever seem to coalesce into a writerly voice. — Dan Bejar

The logic: Reading is a private pursuit, one that often takes place behind closed doors. A young lady might retreat with a book, might even take it into her boudoir, and there, reclining on here silken sheets, imbibing the thrills and chills manufactured by writerly quills, one of her hands, one not absolutely needed to grip the little volume, might wander. The fear, in short, as one-handed reading. [p. 146] — Siri Hustvedt

Assuming that all bad girls smoke. I don't think so. I've been around a lot of bad girls who don't smoke, you know, so I think it's easy to put a cigarette into, you know, into anyone's hands and say, well that makes them a bad boy or a bad girl. There are many more creative ways from a writerly point of view to do that. — Joe Eszterhas

Casey recalled how Gail defended herself in the parking lot of the English & Philosophy Building from the unwanted attentions of a lecherous fellow student, who shall remain nameless. 'Please leave me alone,' Ms Godwin warned the offending student, 'or I shall be forced to wound you with a weapon you can ill afford to be wounded by in a town this small.' The threat was most mysterious, not to mention writerly, but the oafish lecher was not easily deterred. 'And what might that weapon be, little lady?' the lout allegedly asked. 'Gossip,' Gail Godwin replied. — John Irving

I was first a reader and without readers what would be the point in writing. For those of you who love a good story, thank you for being willing to read what we writerly folk create. — Michelle Dennis Evans