Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Writing

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

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

Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus ticket, on the wall of a cell.

David Nicholls

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

George Burns

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

Edwin Schlossberg

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

Peter De Vries

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

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

Eric A. Burns

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

Benjamin Disraeli

10.

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

Stephen King

11.

I always wrote with the idea that what I put out there is going to stay there. Once I publish something, it has been published. I've never deleted more than one or two posts from my site. I don't think that there are takebacks. I don't feel right about it.

Alison Headley

12.

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

13.

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

W. Somerset Maugham

14.

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

Heather Armstrong

15.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

16.

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

17.

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

Min Kim

18.

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

19.

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

Josh Billings

20.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

21.

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

22.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

23.

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

24.

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

George Ade

25.

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

Thomas Mann

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Inigo DeLeon

29.

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

30.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

31.

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

Bobby Knight

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

35.

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

36.

It's not about the writing. It's about the feelings behind the words.

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

43.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

44.

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

Tom Bissell

45.

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

Sarah Hepola

46.

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

47.

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

Real Live Preacher

48.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

49.

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

Solomon Short

50.

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