Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about Writing

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

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

Min Kim

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

Solomon Short

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

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

Edwin Schlossberg

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

Melanie Benjamin

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

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

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

10.

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

Edward Gibbon

11.

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

12.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

13.

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

Martin Myers

14.

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

Tom Bissell

15.

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

Josh Billings

16.

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

Jules Renard

17.

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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.

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

20.

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

Peter De Vries

21.

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

Real Live Preacher

22.

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

23.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

24.

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

25.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

There is nothing to write about, you say. Well then, write and let me know just this - that there is nothing to write about; or tell me in the good old style if you are well. That's right. I am quite well.

Pliny the Younger

29.

In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.

George Orwell

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Henry James

33.

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

34.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

35.

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

36.

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

Samuel Johnson

37.

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

38.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Truman Capote

44.

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

Samuel Johnson

45.

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

Real Live Preacher

46.

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

Jeff Jarvis

47.

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

Jules Renard

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.

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

Randy Pausch

50.

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

Carol Burnett