A writer is a writer when he says he is.

To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.

Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a journalist)

Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.

A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.

Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.

I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it's built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good, mesmerizing story is what one does without question. But beyond that, any writer worth his/her hire knows that <i>all</i> writing, one way or another, is subversive. It is guerrilla warfare against the <i>status quo</i>.

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.

Generally, great writers are not eclectic. Each tightly focuses his oeuvre on one idea, a single subject that ignites his passion, a subject he pursues with beautiful variation through a lifetime of work.