Writing Life Quotes

Life baffles me most days. Maybe that's why I write. To try and make sense of it all.

~ Christy Hall

Most days, writing simply requires work-ethic, discipline, clarity, focus, time. Other days...it will demand absolutely everything of you.

~ Christy Hall

Nothing is louder than silence.

~ Christy Hall

Give all that you can. No more. No less. Every. Single. Day.

~ Christy Hall

I write because that is what I am supposed to do.

~ Christy Hall

A writer writes. There are no exceptions to this reality. No excuses. Stop wasting time talking about your stories and get them on paper.

~ Christy Hall

I wear the writer pants in the family.

~ Buffy Andrews

I sometimes think if I did not write I would be a madwoman. Now I am a sane woman with a lot of mad pages.

~ Kendall Hailey

I don't think writers need to be insane. Just crazy.

~ Rayne Hall

Most writing doesn’t take place on the page, it takes place in your head.

~ Susan Orlean

What doesn't kill us gives us something new to write about.

~ Julie Wright

I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the air in Death Valley. Needless to say, skies over the Atacama are pristine. The pilgrim astronomer ventures to the earth’s ravaged reaches in order to peer more keenly at other worlds, and I suppose the novelist is up to something similar.

~ Brad Leithauser

You may be a serious writer if ….10. your hard drive is littered with random notes and story ideas … but not nearly as littered as your head.9. you keep pen and paper next to your bed. And in the glove compartment. And in your gym bag. Also on the rim of the bathtub.8. a day without Roget’s Thesaurus is a day without sunshine.7. your emotional landscape includes creativity, confidence, elation, frustration, and the occasional neurosis.6. you’ve ever had to clean peanut butter and bread crumbs off your keyboard, because the work was going well, and you didn’t want to stop for lunch.5. grammar and punctuation turn you on.4. your interest in a new acquaintance is directly proportionate to his/her potential as a secondary character.3. you’ve worn the white e, r, s, and t clean off your keyboard.2. the search history on your web browser would raise red flags with the FBI, CIA, DEA, and mental health professionals everywhere.1. you have stories to tell, and you just. Keep. Telling. Them.

~ Kathy Disanto

A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.

~ Roman Payne

I like to make blank pages darker. It's this thing I do.

~ Rob E. Boley

We may think of ourselves as static anti-heroes, but in reality we're dynamic protagonists just waiting for our courage to kick in.

~ Justin Alcala

Come now, I was not about to let that thing eat you.

~ Stacy Buck

I became a physicist to understand the world, then I became a writer to try and change it.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Language is a door. Words en-trance and are an entrance; they draw you in. When you read, the book you cradle disappears and the tales within unfold in your mind. Writing is a shelter of words and reading an interior adventure.

~ Laurie Seidler

Reading and writing are solitary activities that increase a person’s capacity for concentration, awareness, and conceptual thought as the person weaves immediate information with stored memories.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The only difference between writers and people who don't write is that writers aren't afraid to display their demons.

~ Carla H. Krueger

I just inhaled kimchi ramen. Nose on fire. Next chapter may be obscured by tears.

~ Mcm

Write a daily gratitude.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Who thought up the dumb idea to arrange the memoir section in the bookstore by subject?

~ Slash Coleman

Sleepless nights, infinite random thoughts, Remembering those moments, he had much to say, an urge to talk to someone, to be cared, to be loved, to be understood !! She was gone by now, And he was lost !! There it was, A white paper note, a pen, and the dark clouds forcing him to spill out !! Yes Words did most of talking, the unsaid words took the paper form .. Strange it was, the way Love was lost somewhere in the Library stacks !!

~ Douglas Self

The other thing that’s happened with writing is that I’m not afraid it will go away. Up until a couple of years ago, I feared that sitting down with paper and pencil revealed too much desire and that for such ambition I would be punished. My vocabulary would contract anorexia, ideas would be born autistic, even titles would not come to flirt with me anymore. I suppose this was tied to that internal judge, the serpent who eats her own tail. She insinuates you’re not good enough; you believe her and try less, ratifying her assessment; so you try even less; and on and on. This snake survives on your dying. Finally, now, the elided words of my wisest writing teacher, the poet David Wojahn, make sense. “Be ambitious,” he said, “for the work.” Not for the in-dwelling editor. That bitch was impossible to please anyway.

~ Marsha L. Larsen

The secret of being a successful writer is--write. Every writer deserves that chance.

~ Millicent Ashby

I only wish to write.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I am sorry, I am not a writer. I simply put my thoughts on paper. Those helped by them call them a book and me a writer. Those who are not helped call it rubbish and me a fool. Both have reason.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

One day I will write a book. An epitaph

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Every book has its ancestors

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Writing is exposing yourself to strangers

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Writing is a competition between the writer and the page. When the page wins, you fail as a writer.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

People who make snide comments to authors like anyone can write a book or well, you did it, so obviously I can/it can't be that hard or poke at a book because it's romance or genre fiction and act like that somehow makes it substandard because they don't read it... well, ok, go ahead. Write a bestseller. Don't forget to go through the correct edit process. We'll wait.

~ Michelle M. Pillow

It is a long journey, not just as a writer, but as a human being. Take nothing and no one for granted, be humble always, be kind especially when it's difficult and never forget the place where you came from and the people that helped you get where you are. These things will live on in you and through you, long after the words have faded.

~ C.k. Webb

To have attracted readers is the most magical part of my writing life. I was not expecting you to show up when I wrote my first books. It took me by surprise. It filled me with gratitude. It still does.

~ Pat Conroy

Storytelling is an ancient art. The lucent vibes of stories express what we cannot articulate directly. When we hear someone’s story, we respond to the spark of humanness within ourselves that seeks to come out in the light and greet the world. When we tell the stories of our lives, we give voice to people bereft of speech, we make the persons whom we love or loved immortal, and we pass along our familiarity with the natural and physical world.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The story of what it means to be human is never complete. Every generation will produce its own share of comedies and tragedies, fools and geniuses. What the Greeks started the rest of the world will continue to build upon. The old stories will continue to explicate where we came from, while the new stories will illuminate in what direction humankind trends. The collection of future stories of humanity will add to the cumulative library of stories that past writers told, an anthology of collaborative stories will shed light upon the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Anecdotes don't make good stories. Dig down so far that what finally comes out is not even what you thought it was about.

~ Alice Munro

All people intuitively seek emotional equanimity, freedom from anxiety, distress, and trepidation that might cause a person to lose symmetrical balance of their mind. Nature intended for human beings to live in an enthusiastic and curious manner, always exploring, striving, and creating.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster