Artikel ringan ini menyajikan berbagai kutipan dari berbagai tokoh tentang profesi penulis, kegiatan menulis, dan segala hal di sekitarnya. Beberapa kutipan ini akan menyegarkan, memberi semangat, kadang menyentil, menohok, dan mungkin beberapa akan membuat Anda tersenyum simpul.
"Of writing well the source and fountainhead is wise thinking."
By : Horace (65 BC - 8 BC)
"If you don’t have a six-figure deal by the time you’re thirty-five, you’ve failed. In fact, why even be a writer?"
By : James Atlas, essay: The Fall of Fun, "The New Yorker", November, 1996
"When I am dead, I hope it is said,'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read'."
By Hilaire Belloc
"A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. He needs friendship. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a day-dreamer - to be living a kind of double life."
By Jorge Luis Borges
"Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him."
By Mel Brooks
"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."
By G. K. Chesterton
"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public."
By Sir Winston Churchill
"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
By Tom Clancy
"Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once."
By Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise, 1938
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."
By Cyril Connolly
"The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way."
By Richard Harding Davis
"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork."
By Peter De Vries
"There's one good kind of writer -- a dead one."
By James T. Farrell
"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
By Gene Fowler
"Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason."
By André Gide
"Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting generations to come."
By Montesquieu
"When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing."
By Enrique Jardiel Poncela
"I don't believe in it. All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?"
By Philip Pullman, answering "What do you do about writer's block?"
"To finish is a sadness to a writer - a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done."
By John Steinbeck
"The reading of a poem should be an experience. Its writing must be all the more so."
By Wallace Stevens, Adagia
"Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps twenty players, and Tennessee Williams has about five, and Samuel Beckett one - and maybe a clone of that one. I have ten or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them."
By Gore Vidal
"There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it’s why you want to become a writer — because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it."
-Tobias Wolff
"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill"
By Sir Winston Churchill
"The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads."
By William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958
"I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell."
By William Styron
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
By T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
"The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block."
By Inigo DeLeon
"The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it."
By Leo Rosten (1908 - )
"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard."
By Daphne du Maurier (1907 - 1989)
"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."
By Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)
"Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long."
By Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990)
"A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor."
By Ring Lardner (1885 - 1933), "How to Write Short Stories"
"Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin."
By Stanislaw J. Lec (1909 - 1966), "Unkempt Thoughts"
"If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away."
By Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885)
"The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything."
By John Irving (1942 - )
"For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed."
By Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961), in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech
"Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors."
By Rhys Alexander, Writing Gooder, 12-09-05
"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?"
By George Orwell (1903 - 1950), "Politics and the English Language", 1946
"My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip."
By Elmore Leonard
"Writers aren't exactly people...they're a whole lot of people trying to be one person."
By F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940)
"A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer. He is a man who has signed a contract with his conscious and his sense of duty."
By Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904)
"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."
By Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."
By Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)
"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think."
By Edwin Schlossberg
"Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money."
By Jules Renard (1864 - 1910)
"Never tell anyone that you're writing a book, going on a diet, exercising, taking a course, or quitting smoking. They'll encourage you to death."
By Lynn Johnston (1947 - ), For Better or For Worse, 07-15-06
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
By Stephen King (1947 - ), "Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully - in Ten Minutes", 1988
"Learn as much by writing as by reading."
By Lord Acton
"If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write."
By Stephen King (1947 - ), On Writing
"Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity."
By Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)
"I can't believe it! Reading and writing actually paid off!"
By Matt Groening (1954 - ), The Simpsons
"Not because writing is much pleasure; but not to write is pain."
By Frank Laurance Lukas
"Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem."
By Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), Essay on Robert Frost, quoted in N. Y.. Times: Obit-Editorial, April 1982
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