Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about Writing

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

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

Real Live Preacher

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

Blaise Pascal

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

Truman Capote

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

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

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

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

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

Heather Armstrong

10.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

11.

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

Fran Lebowitz

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

15.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

Leo Rosten

16.

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

17.

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

George Ade

18.

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

19.

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

Eric A. Burns

20.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

21.

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

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.

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

Jules Renard

24.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

25.

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

Martin Myers

26.

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

27.

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

Raymond Chandler

28.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

29.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

30.

The key to non-anxious sermon-writing is that itÆs not about me. ItÆs about the congregation. I honor the fact that the listeners bring more to the sermon than I do. I remind myself of the hundreds of times someone says,'I loved how you saidà'and then tell me things that they heard that were nowhere in my text and that I never said. But they heard what they needed to hear.

Reverend Sean Parker Dennison

31.

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

Peter De Vries

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.

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

34.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Jeff Jarvis

39.

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

Edward Gibbon

40.

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

Min Kim

41.

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.