Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Sarah Hepola

Best Quotes about Writing

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

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

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

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

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

Jules Renard

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

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Victor Hugo

12.

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

Sarah Hepola

13.

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

Truman Capote

14.

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

Thomas Mann

15.

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

16.

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

Josh Billings

17.

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

Fran Lebowitz

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Solomon Short

23.

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

Raymond Chandler

24.

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

Henry James

25.

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

Blaise Pascal

26.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

27.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

28.

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

Randy Pausch

29.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

30.

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

31.

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

Stephen King

32.

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

33.

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

Jeff Jarvis

34.

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

Martin Myers

35.

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

36.

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

Leo Rosten

37.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

38.

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

Bobby Knight

39.

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

40.

The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.

Inigo DeLeon

41.

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

42.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Edith Wharton

43.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

44.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

45.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

Ronald Reagan

46.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Eric A. Burns

50.

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

Real Live Preacher