Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about Writing

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

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

Heather Armstrong

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

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

Samuel Goldwyn

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

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

Jef Mallett

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

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

Solomon Short

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

Edward Gibbon

10.

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

Sarah Hepola

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

14.

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

Henry James

15.

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

Real Live Preacher

16.

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

17.

Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing.

Randy K. Milholland

18.

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

Robert Heinlein

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.

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

Jules Renard

21.

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

W. Somerset Maugham

22.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

23.

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

24.

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

Raymond Chandler

25.

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

Thomas Mann

26.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

27.

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

Fran Lebowitz

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.

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

Randy Pausch

30.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

31.

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

32.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

33.

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

Blaise Pascal

34.

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

35.

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

Victor Hugo

36.

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

George Burns

37.

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

38.

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

Bobby Knight

39.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

40.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

41.

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

Real Live Preacher

42.

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

Truman Capote

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Leo Rosten

47.

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

Elaine Liner

48.

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

Min Kim

49.

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

50.

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