A writer is a person who produces nonfictional writing or literary art such as novels, short stories, poetry, plays, screenplays, or essays—especially someone who writes professionally.
Skilled writers are able to use language to express ideas and images. A writer's work may contribute significantly to the cultural content of a society.
The term writer is customarily used as a synonym of author, although the latter term has a somewhat broader meaning.
Famous quotes containing the word writer:
“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, and Samuel Beckett one—and maybe a clone of that one. I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)