Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Truman Capote

Best Quotes about Writing

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

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

Jules Renard

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

George Ade

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

Real Live Preacher

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

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

Blaise Pascal

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

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

Thomas Mann

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

W. Somerset Maugham

10.

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

Leo Rosten

11.

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

Melanie Benjamin

12.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Henry James

16.

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

Stephen King

17.

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

18.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Stephen King

22.

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

23.

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

Jeff Jarvis

24.

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

Sarah Hepola

25.

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

Jules Renard

26.

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

27.

There is nothing to write about, you say. Well then, write and let me know just this - that there is nothing to write about; or tell me in the good old style if you are well. That's right. I am quite well.

Pliny the Younger

28.

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

Edward Gibbon

29.

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

Heather Armstrong

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr.

34.

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

Raymond Chandler

35.

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

Victor Hugo

36.

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

Tom Bissell

37.

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

38.

Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.

Pliny the Elder

43.

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

44.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

45.

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

Eric A. Burns

46.

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

Randy Pausch

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Truman Capote

50.

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