A Quote by William Faulkner

Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich.

William Faulkner

Quote Topics

Alter Bother Death Destroy Getting Good Good Ones Good Writer Nothing Only Rich Success The Only Thing Thing Time Writer

Quote Author

William Faulkner
American - Writer
September 25, 1897 - July 6, 1962

Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich. Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.

William Faulkner

A writer is a performer as well. A writer isn't the literary department. That gets tried on but nothing's a script unless a good writer goes away and does his thing alone.

William Monahan

The only difference between a good writer who publishes a book and a good writer who doesn't is that the writer who publishes actually finished her book.

Hanya Yanagihara

Intelligence alone can't make a good writer and style alone can't make a good writer - that is, not a really important or significant writer - but the two things together make a really good writer.

Truman Capote

I never wanted to be a celebrity writer. I wanted to be a good writer. I'm still trying to be a good writer. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Thomas McGuane

What good is a writer if he can't destroy literature? And us... what good are we if we don't help as much as we can in that destruction?

Julio Cortazar

Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive.

Marya Mannes

The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style) and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments. The second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one

Stephen King

Getting away from being 'a good girl' is important because it's impossible to be a 'good girl' and a writer at the same time.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz

I think the writer makes a good story good or a good story bad. The writer has a great deal of responsibility.

Tom Robinson

I allegedly am an outsider writer, so I write from the perspective of somebody who doesn't completely fit in. But at the same time, I can state the fact that I don't know of any good writer who is not an outsider writer.

Rabih Alameddine

The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy-the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops

William Saroyan

My only obligation as a fiction writer is to the story, to make it good, so good the busy reader doesn't feel that flipping those pages was a waste of time. And I still believe that.

Leslie Pietrzyk

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

William Faulkner

How often I have tried to tell writing students that the first thing a writer must do is love the reader and wish the reader well. The writer must trust the reader to be at least as intelligent as he is. Only in such well wishing and trust, only when the writer feels he is writing a letter to a good friend, only then will the magic happen.