Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Best Quotes about Writing

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

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

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

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

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

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

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

Sarah Hepola

10.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

11.

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

12.

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

Real Live Preacher

13.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

14.

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

Ray Bradbury

15.

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

Bobby Knight

16.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

17.

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

Carol Burnett

18.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Leo Rosten

23.

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

24.

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

25.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

Stephen King

26.

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

27.

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

H. G. Wells

28.

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

Robert Heinlein

29.

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

30.

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

Henry James

31.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

32.

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

33.

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

Josh Billings

34.

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

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.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

37.

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

38.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

39.

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

Victor Hugo

40.

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

Samuel Johnson

41.

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

Real Live Preacher

42.

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

43.

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

George Ade

44.

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

Blaise Pascal

45.

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

Randy Pausch

46.

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

47.

This is the sixth book I've written, which isn't bad for a guy who's only read two.

George Burns

48.

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

49.

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

Fran Lebowitz

50.

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