Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

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

Sir Francis Bacon

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

Edwin Schlossberg

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

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

Blaise Pascal

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

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

Fran Lebowitz

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

10.

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

11.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Sarah Hepola

18.

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

19.

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

Thomas Mann

20.

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

Randy Pausch

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

24.

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

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.

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

George Burns

27.

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

Peter De Vries

28.

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

29.

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

Bobby Knight

30.

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

31.

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

Jef Mallett

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Elaine Liner

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.

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

Raymond Chandler

37.

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.

John Burroughs

38.

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

Edward Gibbon

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

42.

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

43.

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

Real Live Preacher

44.

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

Melanie Benjamin

45.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

46.

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

Thomas Berger

47.

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

48.

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

Min Kim

49.

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

Jeff Jarvis

50.

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