Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Edwin Schlossberg

Best Quotes about Writing

I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.

Agatha Christie

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

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.

Pliny the Elder

Journalism is just a gun. It's only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that's all you need. Aim it right and you can blow a kneecap off the world.

Warren Ellis

The key to non-anxious sermon-writing is that itÆs not about me. ItÆs about the congregation. I honor the fact that the listeners bring more to the sermon than I do. I remind myself of the hundreds of times someone says,'I loved how you saidà'and then tell me things that they heard that were nowhere in my text and that I never said. But they heard what they needed to hear.

Reverend Sean Parker Dennison

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

Ray Bradbury

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

Jules Renard

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Stephen King

10.

In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.

George Orwell

11.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

Leo Rosten

12.

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

Raymond Chandler

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

Edward Gibbon

16.

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.

Jules Renard

17.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Samuel Johnson

18.

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

Min Kim

19.

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

Stephen King

20.

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

21.

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.

Leonard Bernstein

22.

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

George Burns

23.

Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing.

Randy K. Milholland

24.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

25.

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

Henry James

26.

There is nothing to write about, you say. Well then, write and let me know just this - that there is nothing to write about; or tell me in the good old style if you are well. That's right. I am quite well.

Pliny the Younger

27.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

Josh Billings

28.

I think people want their illusions and writers are mostly illusion. When you read their words, you read a flattened, incomplete version of the writer.

Real Live Preacher

29.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

30.

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

31.

She was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same-you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again.

David Nicholls

32.

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

Victor Hugo

33.

Not every story has explosions and car chases. That's why they have nudity and espionage.

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

34.

I have never thought of writing as hard work, but I have worked hard to find a voice.

Randy Pausch

35.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

George Orwell

36.

This is pretty much what journals are all about, at least to me. I knew as I wrote them that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me.

Colleen Wainwright

37.

This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what youÆre doing, or it comes out flat. You canÆt fake your way through this.

Real Live Preacher

38.

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

39.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say'infinitely'when you mean'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

C. S. Lewis

40.

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

Russell Baker

41.

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

Carol Burnett

42.

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

Thomas Mann

43.

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

H. G. Wells

44.

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