Writer's Integrity Quotes

I think my job is to try and be as honest as I can with what is in my mind and how I feel - I think that's what you're supposed to do, if you're a good writer. So I try to do that. I know I do that. I do do that.

I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.

What writer wants to make compromises with story? Story is the only reason you're in it.

The main engagement of the writer is towards truthfulness; therefore he must keep his mind and his judgement free.

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

Anything less than total candor was bullshit. I owed that to my readers, I owed that to myself, and I owed that most specifically to my mother. I've had some thrilling moments in my 18-year literary career to this point, and nothing comes close to giving Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, the farm girl from Tunnel City, Wisconsin, to the world.

[A writer] must try to think clearly, to feel deeply, to write honestly. If he is fortunate he will make a living, but his work will never be anymore essentially clear and deep and honest than he himself is, and he will be judged finally not for how many copies his books have sold, but for what they have done to enrich the lives of their readers, now and in time to come.

When you're writing personal stories, you have to be totally uncompromising - to the extent that you can be - about yourself. I know that if I am uber-uncompromising with myself, that gives me some latitude to write about others.

A writer has to live with a sense of honor.

I have a degree in journalism, which is something that I make very clear very frequently just so people are aware of it. I went to school to write... Editorial integrity is very important to me.

I write about what I know and what I have experienced. This keeps me an "honest" writer.

If a writer is convinced that he is honest, then it is very difficult for him to be a bad writer.

One truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language.

If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull your punches and second-guess yourself and not do things because you're worried, then don't write. Stay home and do something else.

I'm not a writer on a mission, and I'm very suspicious of writers on missions, but I'm also not living a false life.

Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

I was born Chinese, and I write in Chinese. I don't think there's any need to evade this... to a writer, as to a person, what matters is not his political label or his nationality, but whether he is a person and whether his work is worth looking at.

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

You can get sucked into the idea that, 'Gosh, this is impressive. Maybe I should do this. It will look good.' Or 'I'll write like this because it will impress that critic.'

There is no part of me that feels that I represented myself as your children’s babysitter or their teacher. I was always, I think, completely honest. I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

There is no money in the world that would compensate me for writing a lousy book.

It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham. He was always so entirely there.

The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.