Motivational Quotes

Writing

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

- Honore de Balzac

Best Quotes about Writing

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

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

Eric A. Burns

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

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

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

Jeff Jarvis

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

Samuel Goldwyn

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

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

10.

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

George Burns

11.

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

Real Live Preacher

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Edward Gibbon

19.

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

20.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

21.

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

Real Live Preacher

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.

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

24.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

25.

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

26.

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

Melanie Benjamin

27.

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

Josh Billings

28.

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

Carol Burnett

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Peter De Vries

33.

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

Solomon Short

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Truman Capote

39.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

40.

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

Tom Bissell

41.

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

Bobby Knight

42.

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

Jules Renard

43.

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

44.

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

Thomas Berger

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.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Samuel Johnson