Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about Writing

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

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

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

Raymond Chandler

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

Jeff Jarvis

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

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

Ray Bradbury

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

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

Elaine Liner

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

10.

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

Jules Renard

11.

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

12.

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

Leo Rosten

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Truman Capote

17.

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

Tom Bissell

18.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

19.

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Peter De Vries

20.

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

Blaise Pascal

21.

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

Thomas Berger

22.

I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.

Agatha Christie

23.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

24.

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

Inigo DeLeon

25.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

Joan Didion

26.

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

27.

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

Real Live Preacher

28.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

29.

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

Jules Renard

30.

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

Henry James

31.

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

Victor Hugo

32.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Min Kim

36.

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

Eric A. Burns

37.

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

Robert Heinlein

38.

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

39.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

40.

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

Samuel Johnson

41.

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

Bobby Knight

42.

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

Edward Gibbon

43.

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

44.

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

Jef Mallett

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

H. G. Wells

48.

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

49.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

50.

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

George Ade