Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Samuel Goldwyn

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.

John Irving

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

Tom Bissell

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

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

Jeff Jarvis

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

George Burns

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

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

Thomas Mann

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

Solomon Short

10.

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

Edward Gibbon

11.

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

12.

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

Bobby Knight

13.

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

H. G. Wells

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Min Kim

17.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

18.

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

19.

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

Henry James

20.

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

Sarah Hepola

21.

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

Randy Pausch

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Leo Rosten

25.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

26.

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

27.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

28.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

29.

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

Melanie Benjamin

30.

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

31.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

32.

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

Real Live Preacher

33.

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

Jules Renard

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.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

36.

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

37.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

38.

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

39.

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

Stephen King

40.

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

Jules Renard

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Thomas Berger

44.

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

Stephen King

45.

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

Eric A. Burns

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Real Live Preacher

50.

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

Ray Bradbury