Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Sir Francis Bacon

Best Quotes about 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

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

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

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

Inigo DeLeon

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

Edward Gibbon

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

Solomon Short

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

Peter De Vries

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.

John Burroughs

13.

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

Elaine Liner

14.

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

15.

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

George Ade

16.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

17.

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

Ray Bradbury

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Jules Renard

22.

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

Real Live Preacher

23.

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

Min Kim

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Edwin Schlossberg

27.

I never feel that I have comprehended an emotion, or fully lived even the smallest events, until I have reflected upon it in my journal; my pen is my truest confidant, holding in check the passions and disappointments that I dare not share even with my beloved.

Stephanie Barron

28.

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

29.

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

Fran Lebowitz

30.

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

Heather Armstrong

31.

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

Robert Heinlein

32.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

33.

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

Carol Burnett

34.

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

Jules Renard

35.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

39.

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

Jeff Jarvis

40.

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

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.

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

Leo Rosten

43.

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

44.

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

Randy Pausch

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.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

47.

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