Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Thomas Berger

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Sir Francis Bacon

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

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

Carol Burnett

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

Thomas Mann

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

Jules Renard

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

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

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

Inigo DeLeon

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

10.

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

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

11.

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

Martin Myers

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Fran Lebowitz

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Eric A. Burns

21.

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

22.

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

Real Live Preacher

23.

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

Jeff Jarvis

24.

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

Leo Rosten

25.

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

26.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Stephen King

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

George Ade

33.

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

Randy Pausch

34.

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

35.

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

Henry James

36.

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

37.

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

Bobby Knight

38.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

39.

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

40.

It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.

Isabel Colegate

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Thomas Berger

46.

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

Victor Hugo

47.

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

Sarah Hepola

48.

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

Jef Mallett

49.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

50.

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