Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- H. G. Wells

Best Quotes about Writing

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

Russell Baker

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

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

Thomas Berger

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

Robert Heinlein

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

Thomas Mann

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

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

Bobby Knight

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

Tom Bissell

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

10.

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

11.

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

Josh Billings

12.

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

Melanie Benjamin

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Sarah Hepola

16.

Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about writing.

Heather Armstrong

17.

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

Edward Gibbon

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

21.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

22.

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

Eric A. Burns

23.

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

Truman Capote

24.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

25.

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

26.

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

Jef Mallett

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Inigo DeLeon

30.

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

31.

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

Min Kim

32.

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

Fran Lebowitz

33.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Sir Winston Churchill

34.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

35.

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

Elaine Liner

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

H. G. Wells

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Stephen King

42.

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

Peter De Vries

43.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

44.

First you're an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity.