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Who really said it

I Only Write When Inspiration Strikes. Fortunately It Strikes at Nine Every Morning

Not Peter De Vries — the trail leads to William Faulkner William Faulkner 1897–1962 · American novelist, Nobel laureate 1949
Earliest credit, but indirect — no Faulkner source has been found In copyright

The oldest printing anyone has found is a 1966 Washington Post profile of the novelist Herman Wouk, who “likes to quote William Faulkner” saying it. That is the whole of the evidence for Faulkner: a second-hand quotation printed four years after he died, and Quote Investigator ↗ has found no direct support for it in Faulkner’s own words. Peter De Vries enters the story only in 1980, fourteen years later.

Last verified 10 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I Only Write When Inspiration Strikes. Fortunately It Strikes at Nine Every Morning” The earliest known printing of this quip is a 1966 Washington Post profile of Herman Wouk, who "likes to quote William Faulkner: 'I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning.'" Faulkner had died in 1962 and no direct source for him saying it has been found. The attribution to Peter De Vries first appears in The Observer in 1980.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Peter De Vries. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Washington Post (1966 article)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of William Faulkner — American novelist & Nobel laureate. Theme: "I Only Write When Inspiration Strikes. Fortunately It Strikes at Nine Every Morning". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I Only Write When Inspiration Strikes. Fortunately It Strikes at Nine Every Morning". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Earliest printing
Washington Post — “Writing Is Workaday For Herman Wouk: Inspiration Strikes at Nine Every Morning”
Published
13 November 1966, page F3, by Meryle Secrest
Said by
Herman Wouk, quoting William Faulkner — not Faulkner directly
First De Vries credit
The Observer (London), 28 September 1980, “Sayings of the week”

For a writer with so many books to his credit, he finds writing an exceedingly difficult process of “gritting one’s teeth and putting down one word after another.” He averages 1500 to 2000 words a day and likes to quote William Faulkner: “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning.”

Note whose sentence this is. The quip is inside Wouk’s speech, in a profile of Wouk — so what the earliest record documents is that Wouk credited it to Faulkner in 1966, not that Faulkner said it.

Quote Investigator: the full citation chain, 1966–2004

How we verified this

  • The chronology here is Quote Investigator’s ↗, which traces the quip through eleven dated citations. Its earliest is the 1966 Washington Post profile of Herman Wouk by Meryle Secrest (page F3), reprinted soon after in the Des Moines Register and the Springfield Union.
  • Faulkner died in July 1962, four years before that printing — a gap confirmed against his life dates ↗. Quote Investigator states plainly that it “has not yet located any direct support for the attribution.”
  • The Peter De Vries credit is late and thin: its first appearance is an unsourced list, “Sayings of the week”, in The Observer of 28 September 1980. Quote Investigator’s verdict is that it “seems unlikely he created it though he may have spoken or written a version.”
  • We also checked the obvious places the line is not: it appears in neither Wikiquote’s De Vries page ↗ nor its Faulkner page ↗, neither of which carries any version of it, sourced or otherwise.
In copyright

The earliest documented wording survives inside a Washington Post article of 13 November 1966, which remains in copyright; the words are Herman Wouk’s rendering of a remark he credited to Faulkner. No pre-1931 printing of the quip is known, so there is no public-domain source to point to.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

For a joke about reliable inspiration, this one has been remarkably unreliable about its author. Quote Investigator found it credited in print to four different writers — Faulkner, De Vries, Maugham and Chandler — and only the earliest of those credits has any evidence behind it at all, and even that is second-hand.

Peter De Vries No evidence — and fourteen years late

The first ascription to De Vries is an unsourced entry in The Observer’s “Sayings of the week” on 28 September 1980, in the wording “I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.” By then the quip had been circulating for fourteen years. Quote Investigator ↗: “it seems unlikely he created it.”

Herman Wouk Spread it, disclaimed it

Wouk is the reason the line survives — he quoted it in the 1966 profile and again to the Spokesman-Review in 1986, where his version runs “Well, of course I write on inspiration. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at a quarter past nine.” Both times he credited Faulkner, never himself.

W. Somerset Maugham

By 2002 the quip had migrated to Maugham, in the form “I write only when inspiration strikes … Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” Quote Investigator finds “no substantive support” for it.

Raymond Chandler

The novelist Connie Willis credited Chandler in The Writer in November 2004: “I only write when I’m inspired. Luckily, I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.” Again, no supporting evidence has been found.

Jane Yolen Credited Faulkner, in print, twice

Yolen attributed it to Faulkner in 1986 and again as the epigraph to chapter 2 of her 1989 Guide to Writing for Children — evidence of how firmly the Faulkner credit had settled by the 1980s, not of its origin.

Nobody has produced Faulkner saying it. What survives is Herman Wouk saying that Faulkner said it, in print in 1966, four years after Faulkner’s death — and that, per Quote Investigator ↗, is still the earliest evidence there is.

Context

Why it mattered

The joke works because it refuses the premise. Asked the romantic question — do you write by inspiration or by discipline? — the answer concedes inspiration and then quietly puts it on a timesheet. It has been a favourite of working writers for sixty years for exactly that reason, which is also why so many of them have been credited with it.

There is a quiet irony in the Faulkner attribution. Ralph Keyes, writing about writers’ habits in The Courage to Write, notes that Faulkner “considered his writing day over by 10:30 or 11:00” — so if the nine-o’clock start is his, it was a short appointment.

The earliest record is not Faulkner saying it. It is Wouk saying Faulkner said it.

Read the full story

The route by which the quip spread is unusually visible. The 1966 Washington Post profile was syndicated, appearing in the Des Moines Register that November and the Springfield Union in December, so Wouk’s version of Faulkner reached readers across the country within weeks. In 1971 the novelist Reynolds Price gave a near-identical account to The Raleigh News and Observer: “Someone once asked Mr. Faulkner if he wrote by inspiration or habit and he said he wrote by inspiration, but luckily inspiration arrived at 9 every morning.”

After that the attributions multiply rather than converge — De Vries in 1980, Maugham by 2002, Chandler in 2004 — which is the signature of a free-floating quip rather than a documented remark. Quote Investigator’s closing position is worth carrying intact: the Faulkner evidence “is not strong because it is indirect, and it appeared a few years after the death of Faulkner”, and “perhaps future discoveries will help to clarify authorship.”

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Work Creativity Time

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: inspiration strikes at ninequoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: eleven dated citations from the 1966 Wouk profile to Connie Willis crediting Raymond Chandler in 2004.
William Faulkneren.wikipedia.org

Life dates (25 September 1897 – 6 July 1962) and the 1949 Nobel Prize — the death date that makes the 1966 citation posthumous.
Peter De Vriesen.wikipedia.org

The man the quip is usually pinned on: New Yorker staffer from 1944 to 1987 and author of twenty-five comic novels.
Wikiquote: Peter De Vriesen.wikiquote.org

His sourced quotations — note that this quip is not among them.
Wikiquote: William Faulkneren.wikiquote.org

Faulkner’s sourced quotations, which likewise carry no version of this line.
The Courage to Write (1996) — Ralph Keyesarchive.org

The edition Quote Investigator cites at page 154 for Faulkner’s actual working hours: his writing day ended by 10:30 or 11:00.

The author

About William Faulkner

William Faulkner

1897–1962 · American novelist & Nobel laureate

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American novelist and short-story writer whose major work is set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi — a stand-in for the Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1949 and is commonly ranked among the most influential writers of the twentieth century. He died in July 1962, four years before the first known printing of the quip credited to him here.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Secrest, Meryle. “Writing Is Workaday For Herman Wouk: Inspiration Strikes at Nine Every Morning.” Washington Post, 13 November 1966, F3. Earliest documented appearance, quoting Herman Wouk quoting William Faulkner.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I Only Write When Inspiration Strikes. Fortunately It Strikes at Nine Every Morning’?” Last verified 10 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-only-write-when-inspiration-strikes-fortunately-it/

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