Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about Writing

An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.

W. Somerset Maugham

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

Bobby Knight

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

Robert Heinlein

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

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

Samuel Johnson

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

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

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.

John Burroughs

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.

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

Josh Billings

11.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

12.

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

Fran Lebowitz

13.

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

Eric A. Burns

14.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

18.

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

Real Live Preacher

19.

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

Inigo DeLeon

20.

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

21.

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

H. G. Wells

22.

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

23.

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

Thomas Berger

24.

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

Jef Mallett

25.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

26.

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

Randy Pausch

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Tom Bissell

31.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

32.

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

Carol Burnett

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

37.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

38.

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

Min Kim

39.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

40.

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.

Leonard Bernstein

41.

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

Blaise Pascal

42.

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

43.

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

George Ade

44.

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

Elaine Liner

45.

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

Henry James

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Solomon Short

49.

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

Jeff Jarvis

50.

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