Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Inigo DeLeon

Best Quotes about Writing

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

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

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

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

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

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

Bobby Knight

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

George Ade

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

10.

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

Sarah Hepola

11.

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

Blaise Pascal

12.

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

Ray Bradbury

13.

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

Fran Lebowitz

14.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

15.

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

16.

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

Jef Mallett

17.

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

18.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

22.

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

Jeff Jarvis

23.

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

Heather Armstrong

24.

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

Edward Gibbon

25.

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

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.

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

Jules Renard

28.

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

Min Kim

29.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

30.

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

Peter De Vries

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Melanie Benjamin

36.

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

37.

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

Solomon Short

38.

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

Elaine Liner

39.

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

Inigo DeLeon

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Truman Capote

44.

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

Raymond Chandler

45.

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

46.

If you want to write you must have faith in yourself. Faith enough to believe that if a thing is true about you, it is likely true about many people. And if you can have faith in your integrity and your motives, then you can write about yourself without fear.

Real Live Preacher

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.

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

49.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

50.

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