Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

Best Quotes about Writing

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

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

Sir Francis Bacon

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

Elaine Liner

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

Bobby Knight

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

Victor Hugo

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

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

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

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

10.

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

H. G. Wells

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.

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

David Sedaris

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Fran Lebowitz

16.

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

Samuel Johnson

17.

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

Ray Bradbury

18.

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

Carol Burnett

19.

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

20.

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

Henry James

21.

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

22.

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

Real Live Preacher

23.

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

Melanie Benjamin

24.

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

Robert Heinlein

25.

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

26.

A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

Junot Diaz

27.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

28.

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

Leo Rosten

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

33.

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

Jef Mallett

34.

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

35.

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

Thomas Berger

36.

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

Jules Renard

37.

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

Martin Myers

38.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

39.

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

Truman Capote

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Josh Billings

43.

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

Real Live Preacher

44.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

45.

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

46.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

47.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

48.

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

Peter De Vries

49.

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

Jeff Jarvis

50.

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