Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Edward Gibbon

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Real Live Preacher

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

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

W. Somerset Maugham

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

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

If writers stopped writing about what happened to them, then there would be a lot of empty pages.

Elaine Liner

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

Thomas Mann

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

Jules Renard

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

10.

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

Blaise Pascal

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

15.

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

Edward Gibbon

16.

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

17.

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

Victor Hugo

18.

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

19.

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

Bobby Knight

20.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Jules Renard

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Stephen King

27.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Edith Wharton

28.

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

29.

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

Real Live Preacher

30.

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

Min Kim

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Robert Heinlein

36.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

37.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

38.

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

Eric A. Burns

39.

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

Sarah Hepola

40.

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

Truman Capote

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Ray Bradbury

44.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

45.

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

46.

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

Inigo DeLeon

47.

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

Randy Pausch

48.

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

Raymond Chandler

49.

Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.