Quotes about writers

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.

Something, perhaps, we must believe in, and as Orlando, we have said, had no belief in the usual divinities she bestowed her credulity upon great men — yet with a distinction. Admirals, soldiers, statesmen, moved her not at all. But the very thought of a great writer stirred her to such a pitch of belief that she almost believed him to be invisible. Her instinct was a sound one. One can only believe entirely, perhaps, in what one cannot see.

Writers live in houses other people built.

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Like every writer, he measured the virtues of other writers by their performance, and asked that they measure him by what he conjectured or planned.