Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about Writing

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

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

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

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

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

Sir Francis Bacon

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

Jules Renard

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

George Burns

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

Solomon Short

Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus ticket, on the wall of a cell.

David Nicholls

10.

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

Ray Bradbury

11.

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

Eric A. Burns

12.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

13.

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

Sarah Hepola

14.

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

Raymond Chandler

15.

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

Robert Heinlein

16.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

17.

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

Melanie Benjamin

18.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

19.

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

Elaine Liner

20.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

21.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

22.

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

Blaise Pascal

23.

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

Fran Lebowitz

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

31.

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

Jeff Jarvis

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Thomas Berger

36.

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

Carol Burnett

37.

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

Jef Mallett

38.

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

Martin Myers

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Stephen King

42.

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

Real Live Preacher

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

46.

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

47.

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

Tom Bissell

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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