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

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

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

Randy Pausch

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

Edward Gibbon

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

Min Kim

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

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

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

Charles de Montesquieu

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

George Ade

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

Heather Armstrong

10.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

11.

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

12.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

13.

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

Eric A. Burns

14.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

Stephen King

15.

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

16.

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

H. G. Wells

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Ray Bradbury

20.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

21.

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

Jeff Jarvis

22.

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

23.

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

Samuel Johnson

24.

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

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.

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

Josh Billings

27.

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

Blaise Pascal

28.

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

Truman Capote

29.

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

30.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

31.

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

Martin Myers

32.

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

Thomas Berger

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Real Live Preacher

36.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

37.

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

38.

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

Jules Renard

39.

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

40.

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

Thomas Mann

41.

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

Sarah Hepola

42.

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

43.

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

Elaine Liner

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Robert Heinlein

47.

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

48.

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