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

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

Raymond Chandler

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

Bobby Knight

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

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

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

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

George Ade

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

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

Jules Renard

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

10.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

Joan Didion

11.

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

Stephen King

12.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

13.

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

Sarah Hepola

14.

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

Peter De Vries

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Jeff Jarvis

21.

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

22.

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

Blaise Pascal

23.

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

Real Live Preacher

24.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

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.

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

Robert Heinlein

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.

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

29.

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

Jules Renard

30.

If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.

Victor Hugo

31.

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

Ray Bradbury

32.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

33.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

34.

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

35.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

George Orwell

36.

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

37.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

38.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

39.

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

Min Kim

40.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

41.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

42.

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

43.

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

Melanie Benjamin

44.

This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what youÆre doing, or it comes out flat. You canÆt fake your way through this.

Real Live Preacher

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Fran Lebowitz

49.

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

H. G. Wells

50.

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