Writers, and other art

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
- Christopher Hampton
A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.
- Samuel McChord Crothers
The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.
- Inigo DeLeon
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
- Pablo Picasso
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
- Steven Wright

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

- Edward Gibbon
All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.
- Bobby Knight
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
- Flannery O'Connor
I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
- Seneca
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
- Charles de Montesquieu
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
- Paul Dirac
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.
- Ring Lardner
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
- Samuel Johnson