Motivational Quotes

Writing

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

- Blaise Pascal

Best Quotes about Writing

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

Jef Mallett

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

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

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

Henry James

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

Josh Billings

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

Edwin Schlossberg

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

Blaise Pascal

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

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

Randy Pausch

10.

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stephen King

11.

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

Thomas Berger

12.

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

Carol Burnett

13.

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

Stephen King

14.

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

Jules Renard

15.

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

Stanislaw J. Lec

16.

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

Real Live Preacher

17.

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

Truman Capote

18.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

19.

Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. ItÆs the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors.

Rhys Alexander

20.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier

21.

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

22.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Samuel Johnson

23.

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

Jules Renard

24.

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

25.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

26.

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

27.

No letter from a lover is ever more welcome, brings more joy, than a publisher's expression of interest does to a new author!

Judith Brocklehurst

28.

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

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.

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.

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

George Burns

32.

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

Martin Myers

33.

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

Min Kim

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

George Ade

37.

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

Elaine Liner

38.

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

Leo Rosten

39.

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

Eric A. Burns

40.

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

41.

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

Tom Bissell

42.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

47.

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

Jeff Jarvis

48.

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.