Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about Writing

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

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

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

W. Somerset Maugham

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

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

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

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

H. G. Wells

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

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

Raymond Chandler

10.

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

11.

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

Josh Billings

12.

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

Ray Bradbury

13.

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

Jeff Jarvis

14.

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

Real Live Preacher

15.

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

16.

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

Real Live Preacher

17.

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

Thomas Berger

18.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

George Ade

22.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

23.

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

24.

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

Henry James

25.

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

Thomas Mann

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Truman Capote

29.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

30.

I think people want their illusions and writers are mostly illusion. When you read their words, you read a flattened, incomplete version of the writer.

Real Live Preacher

31.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Jules Renard

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

39.

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

Jef Mallett

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.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Eric A. Burns

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

47.

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

Inigo DeLeon

48.

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

Min Kim

49.

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

50.

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