Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- George Ade

Best Quotes about Writing

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

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

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

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

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

Carol Burnett

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

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

Melanie Benjamin

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

Randy Pausch

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

Charles de Montesquieu

10.

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

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.

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

13.

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

Leo Rosten

14.

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

15.

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

Sarah Hepola

16.

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

Blaise Pascal

17.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

18.

All a good letter has to do is make you feel special.

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

19.

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

Jules Renard

20.

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

Jef Mallett

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

George Ade

25.

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

26.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Stephen King

27.

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

28.

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

Inigo DeLeon

29.

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

Real Live Preacher

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Stephen King

33.

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

34.

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

Tom Bissell

35.

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

36.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

37.

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

Min Kim

38.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

39.

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

H. G. Wells

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Edward Gibbon

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Henry James

47.

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

48.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

49.

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

Elaine Liner

50.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton