What's your favourite quote by/about being a writer? One of mine is actually by the American composer, Morton Feldman, about the importance of getting the tools of the trade right:

"All those things, having the right pen, a comfortable chair...if I had the right chair, I'd be like Mozart."

Elmore Leonard: "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." Or even: "If proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go."

On poetry, from Muse by Elaine Feinstein; 'Write something every day', she said/ 'even if it's only a line, it will protect you.' Because it's about what writing can secretly do.

Oscar Wilde - 'I spent the morning revising a poem and removed a comma. In the afternoon, I put it back' - makes me feel less guilty about my lazyness.

The best quote about writing I know is one of my own, 'get up y'bugger, it's five o'clock.'
Becca.

Love that, Becca, it's now taken over my top spot from Oscar Wilde.

All the writers I know say the same thing in interviews when asked why they became a writer; 'It's the only thing I know how to do.'

my fav was What the hells this supposed to be from the Traverse in Edinburgh

Can anyone tell who said something along the lines that after reading one page he can tell if the writer likes people or not. If he or she doesn't like people than they will not be a good writer.

My favourite (funny) story is about W.B.Yeats. A friend met him in the street one day and asked, 'How are you today?' and Yeats replied, 'Not at all well; today I can only write prose.'


Made me laugh,
Mike

Other than 'the pen being mightier than the sword', there is a quote I like by W. H. Auden who said... 'In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.'

"Good reading is hell writing. To write so well that a person is 20 pages into a book before they realise they're reading is what every writer dreams of doing."

Maya Angelou, in the Observer Magazine last Sunday. And she should know - a fantastic writer who does exactly that: gets you into the story before you even know you're reading.

"You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen, or because writing will mend something broken inside you, or bring something back to life"
Joanne Harris, 'Blackberry Wine'.

The only line I remember from that book, but it covers every reason I ever wrote anything.

(Although Becca's is much funnier!)

If I can write, before I die,
One line of purest poetry.
Or crystalise for all to share
A thought unique, a moment rare,
Within one sentence clear and plain,
Then I shall not have lived in vain.

This was written by Mary Wilson - probably better known as Mrs Harold Wilson, wife of the late Labour Prime Minister.

It sure as hell struck a chord with me.
Dee.

Jemimah,
I don't know who said that, but it's the truest thing, .. if a writer doesn't like people, he or she simply cannot write. And that is why it's vital that people sort out their own personal egos in a different place from the writing space.