Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Edwin Schlossberg

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

Carol Burnett

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

Truman Capote

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

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

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

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

Elaine Liner

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

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

Eric A. Burns

10.

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

Inigo DeLeon

11.

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

Robert Heinlein

12.

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

Jules Renard

13.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Heather Armstrong

20.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

21.

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

Tom Bissell

22.

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

Samuel Johnson

23.

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

24.

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

Real Live Preacher

25.

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

Real Live Preacher

26.

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

27.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

28.

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

Josh Billings

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

35.

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

Stephen King

36.

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

Ray Bradbury

37.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

38.

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

Sarah Hepola

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.

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

41.

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

Min Kim

42.

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

Melanie Benjamin

43.

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

Leo Rosten

44.

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Solomon Short

48.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

49.

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

Thomas Berger

50.

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