Phyllis A. Whitney Quotes

People who write for reward by way of recognition or monetary gain don't know what they're doing. They're in the category of those who write; they are not writers. Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward. Writing is selfish and contradictory in its terms. First of all, you're writing for an audience of one, you must please the one person you're writing for. Yourself.

I read, with a kind of hopeless envy, histories and legends of people of our craft who "do not write for money." It must be a pleasant experience to be able to cultivate so delicate a class of motives for the privilege of doing one's best to express one's thoughts to people who care for them. Personally, I have yet to breathe the ether of such a transcendent sphere. I am proud to say that I have always been a working woman, and always had to be.

I feel a passion for what we're trying to do.I mean, why does somebody who's old who's a writer keep writing? Because that's who they are.

Writing is not "the establishment of a professional reputation" as if one were a doctor or lawyer; it is not properly in the sentence with creation of a family and the purchase of a home.

I love writing. I've pursued it with a passion.

Happy is he who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed, never into the times or the public opinion; and who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale - who writes always to the unknown friend.

If I'm not writing, I'm not fully living. It has become the essential element that defines who I am.

I write because I love doing it.

I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature.

I love to write and I assure you I write regularly... But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.

Writing is almost a place of dreams for me, and I don't have to give up anything to do it.

To me, writing is not a profession. You might as well call living a profession. Or having children. Anything you can't help doing.

Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?

In matters like writing and painting, a man does what he has to do - if he has to write, why then, he writes; and if he doesn't feel the urgent need of writing, there are dozens of professions in which it is easier to earn a comfortable living.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

Real writers write because they love to write. They don't write for public acclaim.

Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it

If what you want to do is write, then it's madness not to do it.

If you can still write in spite of the fact that you're not getting paid, that nobody cares about what you're writing, that nobody wants to publish it, that everybody is telling you to do something else, and you still want to and you still enjoy it and you can't stop doing it...then you're a writer.

Why do you want to become an author? I will accept only one answer. If it is because you feel you can write better than you can do anything else then go ahead and do it without frills and flourishes. Stick to your present job and write in your spare time: but do it as if it is a whole time job.

Don't write for money. Write because you love to do something. If you write for money, you won't write anything worth reading.

So I write mainly for the fun of it, the hell of it, the duty of it. I enjoy writing and will probably be a scribbler on my dying day, sprawled on some stony trail halfway between two dry waterholes.

There's nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it.

I decided that I would do my best in the future not to write books just for money. If you didn't get the money then you didn't have anything. If I did the work I was proud of and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work.

No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.