Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about 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

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

Charles de Montesquieu

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

Leo Rosten

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

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

Josh Billings

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

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

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

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

Victor Hugo

10.

No letter from a lover is ever more welcome, brings more joy, than a publisher's expression of interest does to a new author!

Judith Brocklehurst

11.

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

12.

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

George Burns

13.

Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.

Fran Lebowitz

14.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

15.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Sir Winston Churchill

16.

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

17.

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

Edward Gibbon

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Elaine Liner

22.

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

23.

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

Jules Renard

24.

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

25.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

26.

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

Heather Armstrong

27.

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

Inigo DeLeon

28.

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

Min Kim

29.

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

Henry James

30.

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

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.

Good writing takes more than just time; it wants your best moments and the best of you.

Real Live Preacher

33.

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

Randy Pausch

34.

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

Carol Burnett

35.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

36.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

37.

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

38.

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

Jeff Jarvis

39.

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

40.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

41.

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

Solomon Short

42.

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

43.

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

Robert Heinlein

44.

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

Thomas Mann

45.

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

Real Live Preacher

46.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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