Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

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

Josh Billings

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

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

Thomas Berger

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

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

Jef Mallett

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

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

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

Real Live Preacher

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Solomon Short

15.

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

16.

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

Thomas Mann

17.

The key to non-anxious sermon-writing is that itÆs not about me. ItÆs about the congregation. I honor the fact that the listeners bring more to the sermon than I do. I remind myself of the hundreds of times someone says,'I loved how you saidà'and then tell me things that they heard that were nowhere in my text and that I never said. But they heard what they needed to hear.

Reverend Sean Parker Dennison

18.

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

Min Kim

19.

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

20.

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

Ray Bradbury

21.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

22.

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

Leo Rosten

23.

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

Sarah Hepola

24.

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

25.

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

George Ade

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.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Samuel Johnson

31.

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

Jules Renard

32.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

33.

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

Raymond Chandler

34.

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

Melanie Benjamin

35.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

36.

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

37.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

38.

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

39.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis

40.

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

41.

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

Blaise Pascal

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Jeff Jarvis

45.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

46.

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

Martin Myers

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Jules Renard

50.

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

Tom Bissell