Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Jef Mallett

Best Quotes about Writing

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

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

Raymond Chandler

This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what youÆre doing, or it comes out flat. You canÆt fake your way through this.

Real Live Preacher

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

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

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

Leo Rosten

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

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

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

Bobby Knight

10.

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

George Burns

11.

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

12.

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

Real Live Preacher

13.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Jules Renard

17.

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

18.

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

Min Kim

19.

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

20.

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

Ray Bradbury

21.

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

22.

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

George Ade

23.

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

Elaine Liner

24.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Henry James

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac

34.

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

35.

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

Solomon Short

36.

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

Melanie Benjamin

37.

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

Jules Renard

38.

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

39.

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

40.

The key to non-anxious sermon-writing is that itÆs not about me. ItÆs about the congregation. I honor the fact that the listeners bring more to the sermon than I do. I remind myself of the hundreds of times someone says,'I loved how you saidà'and then tell me things that they heard that were nowhere in my text and that I never said. But they heard what they needed to hear.

Reverend Sean Parker Dennison

41.

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

Jef Mallett

42.

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

Peter De Vries

43.

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

Randy Pausch

44.

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

45.

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

Thomas Berger

46.

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

Charles de Montesquieu

47.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

48.

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

Stephen King

49.

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

50.

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

Eric A. Burns