Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Sir Francis Bacon

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Samuel Johnson

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

Leo Rosten

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Peter De Vries

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

Sarah Hepola

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

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

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

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

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

Solomon Short

10.

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

11.

An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.

W. Somerset Maugham

12.

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

13.

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

George Burns

14.

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

Josh Billings

15.

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

Jeff Jarvis

16.

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

Edward Gibbon

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Writing well mean never having to say,'I guess you had to be there.'

Jef Mallett

20.

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

Fran Lebowitz

21.

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

Inigo DeLeon

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.

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

24.

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

Victor Hugo

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Min Kim

29.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

30.

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

H. G. Wells

31.

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

Eric A. Burns

32.

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

33.

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

Blaise Pascal

34.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

George Ade

38.

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

Truman Capote

39.

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

40.

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

Robert Heinlein

41.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

42.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

43.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

44.

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

45.

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

Thomas Berger

46.

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despairûthe sense that you can never completely put on the page whatÆs in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

47.

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

Raymond Chandler

48.

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

49.

A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.

Tom Bissell

50.

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