Inspirational Quotes

Most writing is done between the mind and the hand, not between the hand and the page.

~ Janet Burroway

Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.

~ William Strunk Jr.

In older myths, the dark road leads downward into the Underworld, where Persephone is carried off by Hades, much against her will, while Ishtar descends of her own accord to beat at the gates of Hell. This road of darkness lies to the West, according to Native American myth, and each of us must travel it at some point in our lives. The western road is one of trials, ordeals, disasters and abrupt life changes — yet a road to be honored, nevertheless, as the road on which wisdom is gained. James Hillman, whose theory of 'archetypal psychology' draws extensively on Greco–Roman myth, echoes this belief when he argues that darkness is vital at certain periods of life, questioning our modern tendency to equate mental health with happiness. It is in the Underworld, he reminds us, that seeds germinate and prepare for spring. Myths of descent and rebirth connect the soul's cycles to those of nature.

~ Terri Windling

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

~ Anne Lamott

For all my longer works (i.e. the novels) I write chapter outlines so I can have the pleasure of departing from them later on.

~ Garth Nix

To be a successful fiction writer you have to write well, write a lot … and let ‘em know you’ve written it! Then rinse and repeat.

~ Gerard De Marigny

If your business plan depends on suddenly being discovered by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.

~ Hugh Macleod

Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.

~ Haruki Murakami

If I’m writing, at least I don’t feel as paralyzed.

~ Laura Goode

If you treat your characters like people, they'll reward you by being fully developed individuals.

~ Don Roff

Inspiration comes and goes, creativity is the result of practice.

~ Phil Cousineau

On my website there's a quote from the writer Anthony Burgess: The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. I've always found that inspiring because the written word, as an art form, is unlike any other: movies, TV, music, they're shared experiences, but books aren't like that. The relationship between a writer and a reader is utterly unique to those two individuals. The world that forms in your head as you read a book will be slightly different to that experienced by every other reader. Anywhere. Ever. Reading is very personal, a communication from one mind to another, something which can't be exactly copied, or replicated, or directly shared. If I read the work of, say, one of the great Victorian novelists, it's like a gift from the past, a momentary connection to another's thoughts. Their ideas are down on paper, to be picked up by me, over a century later. Writers can speak individually to readers across a year, or ten years, or a thousand. That's why I love books.

~ Simon Cheshire

La plus grande chute est celle qu'on fait du haut de l'innocence.

~ Heiner Müller

Writers seek to create order out of the chaos of everyday life, and to extract meaning from both the tragic and the mundane

~ Hope Edelman

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters—I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world.

~ Georges Simenon

You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know

~ Ernest Hemingway

Don't be indifferent about any random idea that occurs to you, because each and every idea is for a particular purpose. it may not be beneficial to you, but can be what others are craving for

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable … If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

~ David Foster Wallace

The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page.

~ Charles Bukowski

Dip your hands into life, scoop up memories, dreams, questions and ideas and weave them into stories.

~ Naomi Kinsman

Fiction---good fiction, anyway---is dream made flesh, given purpose and drive, and set on a quest to show us the best in us and to give us the power and the tools to dream beyond reality's 'merely good enough' to a vision of what is truly great......and then to give us the stories of men and women of character who in turn inspire those of us who dare to reach for the truly great within ourselves.THAT is why you write fiction.

~ Holly Lisle

A good story is a dream shared by the author and the reader. Anything that wakes the reader from the dream is a mortal sin.

~ Victor J. Banis

So here is why I write what I do: We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and no matter what’s been taken from us or what poison we’ve internalized or how hard we’ve had to work to expel it –– we all get to dream.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Writing is the great invention of the world.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Work like hell! I had 122 rejection slips before I sold a story.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Think of yourself as an incandescent power, illuminated and perhaps forever talked to by God and his messengers.

~ Brenda Ueland

As I write, My fingers tap tap the keys the way Ravi Shankar's fingers pluck and strum the strings of his sitar.

~ Christina Westover

Fill your papers with the breathings of your heart.

~ William Wadsworth

Before I start a project, I always ask myself the following question. Why is this book worth a year of my life? There needs to be something about the theme, the technique, or the research that makes the time spent on it worthwhile.

~ David Morrell

Everyone whirled around her, entranced by the stories in which they recognized themselves, but in the stories they were also more than themselves and it always felt at the end fulfilled, not meaningless and empty like life can sometimes feel.

~ Francesca Lia Block

Never ever forget that you enlisted in the ranks – you weren’t press ganged or drafted. Nobody owes you anything – least of all respect for your work – until you’ve earned it with what you put on the page.

~ T.f. Rigelhof

The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Writing is more than a gift. It is a struggle that blesses those who see it through to the end.

~ Nona Mae King

I know writers have to be crazy. But more than that that, they have to get made and stay mad. If things don't make a writer mad, he'll end up writing Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottantail.

~ Leon Uris

A novel takes the courage of a marathon runner, and as long as you have to run, you might as well be a winning marathon runner. Serendipity and blind faith faith in yourself won't hurt a thing. All the bastards in the world will snicker and sneer because they haven't the talent to zip up their flies by themselves. To hell with them, particularly the critics. Stand in there, son, no matter how badly you are battered and hurt.

~ Leon Uris

To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as if nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful… everything that happens is of consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for unlimited possibility.

~ James P. Carse

Always choose love over fear.

~ A.d. Posey

We are the thoughts we choose to keep.

~ A.d. Posey

I am looking at him, I am witnessing a unique physiological phenomenon: John Shade perceiving and transforming the world, taking it in and taking it apart, re-combining its elements in the very process of storing them up so as to produce at some unspecified date an organic miracle, a fusion of image and music, a line of verse.

~ Vladimir Nabokov

For some young artists, it can take a bit of time to discover which tools (which medium, or genre, or career pathway) will truly suit them best. For me, although many different art forms attract me, the tools that I find most natural and comfortable are language and oil paint; I've also learned that as someone with a limited number of spoons it's best to keep my toolbox clean and simple. My husband, by contrast, thrives with a toolbox absolutely crowded to bursting, working with language, voice, musical instruments, puppets, masks animated on a theater stage, computer and video imagery, and half a dozen other things besides, no one of these tools more important than the others, and all somehow working together. For other artists, the tools at hand might be needles and thread; or a jeweller's torch; or a rack of cooking spices; or the time to shape a young child's day....To me, it's all art, inside the studio and out. At least it is if we approach our lives that way.

~ Terri Windling