Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Edwin Schlossberg

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Sir Francis Bacon

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

Charles de Montesquieu

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

Robert Heinlein

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Edward Gibbon

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

George Burns

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

Josh Billings

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

Truman Capote

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

13.

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

14.

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

Leo Rosten

15.

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

Real Live Preacher

16.

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

Jules Renard

17.

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

18.

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

Raymond Chandler

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Stephen King

26.

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

Real Live Preacher

27.

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

28.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

29.

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

Ray Bradbury

30.

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

Thomas Mann

31.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

32.

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

33.

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

H. G. Wells

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Solomon Short

38.

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

39.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Samuel Johnson

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Elaine Liner

48.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

49.

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

50.

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