Motivational Quotes

Writing

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

- Samuel Johnson

Best Quotes about Writing

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

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

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

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

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

Edward Gibbon

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

Charles de Montesquieu

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

Carol Burnett

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

12.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Sir Winston Churchill

13.

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

14.

This is pretty much what journals are all about, at least to me. I knew as I wrote them that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me.

Colleen Wainwright

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.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

17.

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

18.

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

Thomas Berger

19.

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

Solomon Short

20.

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

Jules Renard

21.

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

22.

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

Jeff Jarvis

23.

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

George Burns

24.

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

Stephen King

25.

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

Sarah Hepola

26.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

27.

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

28.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

29.

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

Jef Mallett

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Henry James

34.

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

35.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Real Live Preacher

39.

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

40.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

41.

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

Peter De Vries

42.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

43.

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

Josh Billings

44.

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

Eric A. Burns

45.

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

Min Kim

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Real Live Preacher

49.

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

Martin Myers

50.

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