Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Robert Heinlein

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Martin Myers

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

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

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

Solomon Short

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

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

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

Edwin Schlossberg

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

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

Thomas Mann

10.

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

11.

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

Blaise Pascal

12.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

13.

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

H. G. Wells

14.

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

Bobby Knight

15.

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

Heather Armstrong

16.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

17.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

18.

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

19.

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

Ray Bradbury

20.

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

Eric A. Burns

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

George Ade

24.

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

Stephen King

25.

A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

Junot Diaz

26.

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

27.

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

Peter De Vries

28.

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

Melanie Benjamin

29.

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

Josh Billings

30.

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

Edward Gibbon

31.

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

Min Kim

32.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

37.

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

Victor Hugo

38.

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

39.

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

Randy Pausch

40.

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

41.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

42.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

43.

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

44.

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

Jules Renard

45.

Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize.

Henry James

46.

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

Tom Bissell

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.

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

Leo Rosten

49.

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

50.

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

Thomas Berger