Writing Quotes

Words themselves are all the ghosts we need.

~ Donald Harington

In such troubled times, we must remember the value writers have—the value of inventing new language to keep pace with the rapidly transforming world around us.

~ Jonathan Stalling

Words are precious things meant to create, to imagine, to dream with.

~ Elizabeth Chandler

In the process, what must be spoken meets what cannot be said. Each word is a catalyst, requiring the writer to break out forcefully from another story, from the primitive camp where history, society, and politics converge, to touch upon that 'what' and that 'who.' At that touch, one finds the unlimited boundaries of man, concealed by words.

~ Duo Duo

I ask for tons of notebooks for my birthday, the ones with college ruled lines, and I carry them with me, pretend they're my friends, and write anything that comes to mind. Something about my stories makes me happy, allows me to drift away a bit.

~ Kenny Porpora

I sit in front of the notebook and feel like it’s just too late for me. And that this book isn’t working, nothing’s working, everything feels like it’s made of spiders.

~ Jessica Abel

What we have now, shall never be again. The poets of the past sit in amazement of the wanna-be's of an era long gone.

~ T. Grassan

Bells ringing with no soundLaughter with no voiceHappiness lost without being foundMaking love with no noise

~ T. Grassan

Play a Death March for me

~ T. Grassan

A lot of people will ask me “Whats depression like?”. Its the same answer every time. “Its shitty...”. But you know whats its really like? Its like a bundle of dark clouds falling over your head, raining constantly. So your drenched. You cant function properly, you can’t do the things you love because your fingers slip and you mess up. Your clothes metaphorically are like your life, you try to change them, but they only stay dry for a few seconds, then its the same old story all over again. And no one, I repeat no one, wants to be near you. Your a wet, soaking, depressed and helpless kitten lost in depressions firm grip. Its like a stalker, it follows you. Everywhere you go, Its waiting for you. You can’t leave it. You can’t ignore it. Its always there. Thats what makes it so scary. You can never get away from it, unless, someone pushes those fiery and dark clouds away. If their willing to sacrifice everything just to make you happy. Even if that means taking those clouds upon themselves.

~ Brooke Janser (12-24)

But then one time, you track down an email address and you're near a computer with Internet access so you don't have that nice cushion and you type what you're feeling and press send before you have a chance to talk yourself out of it. And then you wait, and wait, and wait, and nothing comes back, so all those things you thought were so important to say, really, they weren't. They weren't worth saying at all.

~ Gayle Forman

The depression was not incapacitating. It made it hard to take a lot of my suburban life seriously, but that was inextricably mingled with a growing consciousness of the larger brutalities of the world. Ethiopian children were starving on the evening news and genocide was mushrooming in Cambodia. Was I truly depressed or just awakening to the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, the insight that samsaric life is misery? My melancholy seemed like simple realism; if you weren't depressed, you obviously didn't know what was going on.

~ Tim Farrington

It's too short,' she said, 'ever so much too short.' Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.

~ Virginia Woolf

Whether the underlying cause of your dependency is a chemical imbalance, unresolved events from the past, beliefs you hold that are inconsistent with what is true, an inability to cope with current conditions, or a combination of these four causes, know this: not only are all the causes of dependency within you, but all the solutions are within you as well.

~ Chris Prentiss

The core of your true self is never lost. Let go of all the pretending and the becoming you've done just to belong.Curl up with your rawness and come home. You don't have to find yourself, you just have to let yourself in.

~ D. Antoinette Foy

I walked to Mairangi Bay beach, day after day, seeking companionship in the roar of the ocean, and contemplating the shipwreck of my life. There, in that isolated wilderness, amidst the screaming gulls, and consistent rhythm of the tides, I channeled my chaotic thoughts through my pen and released them into poetry, until the quiet desperation passed and I was secure in the knowledge that I had made it through another day.

~ B.g. Bowers

I don't have problems. I am a writer. I am the problem.

~ Arzum Uzun

I think I've lost my faith and I can't stop writingbecause I don't know howmuch longer I can hold on.

~ Emma Forrest

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre.

~ Andy Behrman

An intensely gripping narrative...expertly crafted and totally addictive...a must read!

~ Maggie Reese

Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there's prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too.

~ Sarah Waters

May God’s grace awaken the heart of writing in my husband, Jeremiah Nii Mama Akita.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Writing is how I process the cacophony of each day. Prayer is how God makes sense out of my scribbles.

~ Donna Pyle

Let’s face it: suffering discredits goodness. I’m agnostic in practice though faith-based in theory. I used to pray but now know he’ll do what he darn well pleases when he darn well pleases. Will he listen? Maybe. We have a book that says so, but how much happens beyond that book, I can’t say. That’s agnosticism in its bleakest and most honest form. Don’t judge me, yet believe me when I tell you that years of abuse tend to wring out every ounce of one’s ability to understand and adhere to faith in standard form.

~ Chila Woychik

I write, as far as I can tell, because writing is a black sheep sibling of prayer, an urgent struggle against a bad connection, intent, hopeful, innocent, never quite good enough.

~ Kirk Wilson

Anais Nin responds to the age-old question of why some people are compelled to write:We... write to heighten our own awareness of life, we write to lure and enchant and console others, we write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth, we write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely. We write as the birds sing. As the primitive dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write.Now, please read that one more time. But this time, substitute the word “live” for the word “write” and there you have it—the point that’s always been right there in front of our nose.

~ Lee Eisenberg

Life's like a book: What matters is the hook. Be it short or long, just live it strong. Whether it's five stars, or how near or far, just soar!

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

Life has a vendetta against writers. It does everything in it's power to get in the way of our craft. Maybe it thinks we embellish too much?

~ Hannah Harding

You ought to write grateful gratitude every day

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

My life is ruled by four W’s: my writing, my work, my wife, and my whisky. Not necessarily in that order.

~ Ashwin Sanghi

There’s no other way but work, work and work. Read widely, live wildly, plumb the depths of your­self, turn your­self inside out until you find your voice

~ Claire Meadows

Book:Sharing of life and experiences with other people.This is lifetime notes for all generations.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Life is a book. There are many pages to be written.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The profoundest thing writing teaches us is how much we contradict ourselves.

~ Marty Rubin

Adams has done a bit of everything, from radio to television to designing computer games. Not all of them worked out. “These are life’s little learning experiences,” he said. “You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.’ “At the end of all this being-determined-to-be-a-jack-of-all-trades, I think I’m better off just sitting down and putting a hundred thousand words in a cunning order.” Adams writes “slowly and painfully.” “People assume you sit in a room, looking pensive and writing great thoughts,” he said. “But you mostly sit in a room looking panic-stricken and hoping they haven’t put a guard on the door yet.

~ Douglas Adams

Education stimulates self-study.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

One piece of wisdom a writer quickly learns ~ typos keep you humble.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

I once had a substitute teacher in my 4th grade class that was wonderful. He said learning was like throwing mud on a wall. Some will stick, and some will fall off. But if you keep throwing the mud on the wall, eventually the whole wall will be covered in mud. I think writing is very much the same. You have to keep at it. Some will stick, and some will fall away, but you keep writing, and eventually, you've impacted thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people with your vision.

~ Michele E. Gwynn

... because one day, maybe one day, if I learned how to write clear enough, sing loud enough, be strong enough, I could explain myself in a way that made sense and then maybe one day, one day, someone out there would hear and recognise her or himself and I could let them know that they are not alone. Just like that song I had on repeat for several nights as I walked lonely on empty streets, let me know that I was notaloneand that’s how it starts.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

The people I've known who wanted to become writers, knowing what it meant, did become writers.

~ John Gardner