Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about Writing

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

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story.

Randy Pausch

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

Josh Billings

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

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

Jules Renard

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

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

Real Live Preacher

10.

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

Tom Bissell

11.

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

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.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Randy Pausch

18.

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

19.

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

Bobby Knight

20.

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

21.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

22.

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

23.

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

George Burns

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Robert Heinlein

27.

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despairûthe sense that you can never completely put on the page whatÆs in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

28.

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

Thomas Berger

29.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

30.

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

Elaine Liner

31.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

32.

Writing well mean never having to say,'I guess you had to be there.'

Jef Mallett

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Blaise Pascal

39.

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

Sarah Hepola

40.

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

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.

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

Stephen King

43.

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

Min Kim

44.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.

Inigo DeLeon

49.

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

50.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton