Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about Writing

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.

Saul Bellow

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

David Sedaris

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

Carol Burnett

I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it.

Lord Brabazon

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

Junot Diaz

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

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

Martin Myers

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

Jules Renard

10.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

11.

I always wrote with the idea that what I put out there is going to stay there. Once I publish something, it has been published. I've never deleted more than one or two posts from my site. I don't think that there are takebacks. I don't feel right about it.

Alison Headley

12.

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

Ray Bradbury

13.

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

Min Kim

14.

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

Thomas Berger

15.

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

Victor Hugo

16.

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

17.

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

18.

All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.

Bobby Knight

19.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

20.

There are a lot of people who can't write and maybe shouldn't write.

Sarah Hepola

21.

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

Randy Pausch

22.

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

Leo Rosten

23.

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

Solomon Short

24.

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

Real Live Preacher

25.

Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about writing.

Heather Armstrong

26.

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

Blaise Pascal

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

George Ade

30.

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

H. G. Wells

31.

It's not about the writing. It's about the feelings behind the words.

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

32.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert Heinlein

33.

When you write things down, they sometimes take you places you hadn't planned.

Melanie Benjamin

34.

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

35.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

Truman Capote

36.

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

37.

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

38.

The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.

Inigo DeLeon

39.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Edith Wharton

40.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

41.

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

42.

See things as they are and write about them. DonÆt waste your creative energy trying to make things up. Even if you are writing fiction, write the things you see and know.

Real Live Preacher

43.

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

Eric A. Burns

44.

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

Henry James

45.

All a good letter has to do is make you feel special.

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

46.

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

47.

I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

Samuel Goldwyn

48.

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

Raymond Chandler

49.

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

Ring Lardner

50.

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

Edwin Schlossberg