Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Raymond Chandler

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

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

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

Ray Bradbury

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

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

George Burns

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

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

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

10.

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

11.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Edith Wharton

12.

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

Raymond Chandler

13.

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

14.

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

15.

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.

H. G. Wells

16.

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

17.

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

George Ade

18.

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

Solomon Short

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Carol Burnett

22.

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

Eric A. Burns

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Truman Capote

26.

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

27.

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

Heather Armstrong

28.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Real Live Preacher

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Randy Pausch

39.

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

40.

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

Martin Myers

41.

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

42.

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.

Jules Renard

43.

In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.

Pliny the Elder

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Samuel Johnson

47.

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

48.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

49.

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

50.

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