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

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

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

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

Samuel Goldwyn

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

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

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

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

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

W. Somerset Maugham

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

Melanie Benjamin

10.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

11.

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

Thomas Berger

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Leo Rosten

15.

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

16.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

17.

In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.

Pliny the Elder

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Ray Bradbury

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Heather Armstrong

24.

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

Josh Billings

25.

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

Peter De Vries

26.

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

Stanislaw J. Lec

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Martin Myers

30.

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

Robert Heinlein

31.

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

Jules Renard

32.

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

33.

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

Truman Capote

34.

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

Real Live Preacher

35.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

36.

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

Fran Lebowitz

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Blaise Pascal

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

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.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

47.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

48.

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

49.

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

George Burns

50.

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

George Ade