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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023May 9, 2025 536

There is a stereotype out there about writers. They’re talented and frustrated and hit the bottle way too often. Maybe the reason some talented writers are frustrated and drink to excess is because of what they’re asked to write. Example:

Why Writers Drink

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Roddy Doyle

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.

Robert McKee

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

Orson Scott Card

It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.

Bob Dylan

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.