Motivational Quotes

Writing

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

- Daphne du Maurier

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Real Live Preacher

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

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

Randy Pausch

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

Inigo DeLeon

Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus ticket, on the wall of a cell.

David Nicholls

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

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

Victor Hugo

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

Samuel Goldwyn

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

14.

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

W. Somerset Maugham

15.

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

Bobby Knight

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Blaise Pascal

20.

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

21.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

22.

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

23.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Oscar Wilde

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

27.

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

Solomon Short

28.

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

Sarah Hepola

29.

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

Eric A. Burns

30.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

31.

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

Jules Renard

32.

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

Fran Lebowitz

33.

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

Jeff Jarvis

34.

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

Heather Armstrong

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Edward Gibbon

39.

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

40.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

41.

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

Carol Burnett

42.

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

Thomas Berger

43.

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

Josh Billings

44.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

45.

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

46.

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

Tom Bissell

47.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Melanie Benjamin