Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Jef Mallett

Best Quotes about Writing

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

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

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

Edward Gibbon

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

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

Samuel Goldwyn

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

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

Henry James

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

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

Victor Hugo

10.

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

Real Live Preacher

11.

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

12.

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

Carol Burnett

13.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

14.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

15.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

16.

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

Fran Lebowitz

17.

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

Blaise Pascal

18.

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

Randy Pausch

19.

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

Elaine Liner

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Robert Heinlein

27.

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

28.

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

Jeff Jarvis

29.

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

Thomas Berger

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Heather Armstrong

33.

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

Peter De Vries

34.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Stephen King

35.

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

36.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

37.

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

38.

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

Inigo DeLeon

39.

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

Jules Renard

40.

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

W. Somerset Maugham

41.

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

Tom Bissell

42.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

43.

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

Josh Billings

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

47.

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Sir Francis Bacon

48.

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

Thomas Mann

49.

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

50.

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

Eric A. Burns