Motivational Quotes

Writing

Maybe that's just what happens; you start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few jokes.

- David Nicholls

Best Quotes about Writing

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Thomas Mann

If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.

Victor Hugo

If writers stopped writing about what happened to them, then there would be a lot of empty pages.

Elaine Liner

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

Carol Burnett

The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story.

Randy Pausch

Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. ItÆs the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors.

Rhys Alexander

There's always something to write about. If there's not then you need to live life more aggressively.

Min Kim

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

George Bernard Shaw

10.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

Stephen King

11.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

12.

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

Stanislaw J. Lec

13.

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.

Solomon Short

14.

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

Samuel Johnson

15.

It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.

Isabel Colegate

16.

If the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it - the effort, however humble, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded.

Ann Radcliffe

17.

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.

Jules Renard

18.

Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it.

Jesse Stuart

19.

This is the sixth book I've written, which isn't bad for a guy who's only read two.

George Burns

20.

Maybe that's just what happens; you start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few jokes.

David Nicholls

21.

I never feel that I have comprehended an emotion, or fully lived even the smallest events, until I have reflected upon it in my journal; my pen is my truest confidant, holding in check the passions and disappointments that I dare not share even with my beloved.

Stephanie Barron

22.

You ask me why I do not write something....I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.

Florence Nightingale

23.

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.

Thomas Berger

24.

The first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them.

Jeff Jarvis

25.

The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it.

Benjamin Disraeli

26.

If you want to write you must have faith in yourself. Faith enough to believe that if a thing is true about you, it is likely true about many people. And if you can have faith in your integrity and your motives, then you can write about yourself without fear.

Real Live Preacher

27.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Oscar Wilde

28.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

Joan Didion

29.

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

Charles de Montesquieu

30.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

Ronald Reagan

31.

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

W. Somerset Maugham

32.

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

Isaac Asimov

33.

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.

John Burroughs

34.

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

35.

Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize.

Henry James

36.

Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.

Katherine Paterson

37.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

38.

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

Edwin Schlossberg

39.

Please write again soon. Though my own life is filled with activity, letters encourage momentary escape into others lives and I come back to my own with greater contentment.

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

40.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis

41.

I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Blaise Pascal

42.

After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity.

George Ade

43.

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.

H. G. Wells

44.

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

Ray Bradbury

45.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

John Ruskin

46.

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Sir Francis Bacon

47.

I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.

Real Live Preacher

48.

The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.

John Irving

49.

It's not enough to create magic. You have to create a price for magic, too. You have to create rules.

Eric A. Burns

50.

First you're an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity.

Martin Myers