Writing Quotes

And all that time I was lying to my support group. I told the ladies, Sure! I'm writing! when I wasn't. Yes, I could have filled all those newfound minutes with actual work, but I had no confidence in myself. I was a fraud. Who was I to pick up a pen and expect anything good to come out of it? I expected perfection as soon as the pencil hit the paper, and since that's impossible, I couldn't get myself to start. Then I felt guilty about not starting, which made me want to start even less. And with no game to bury the feelings, I got very depressed. No wonder I didn't book any acting jobs in the last half of 2006. No one wanted to hire a clinically depressed person to sell snack foods.

~ Felicia Day

I didn’t need to be a writer to know that I could. Did you have to become a penis to act like a dick?

~ Crystal Woods

All of my insecuritiesshine in the dark.

~ Lori Jenessa Nelson

I'm the biggest critic of my own work, but sometimes you nail a chapter so good that you have to take a step back and admire that bitch.

~ R.d. Ronald

It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.

~ Zadie Smith

I love my style of writing. Nope, it's not the most poetic stuff you've ever read but you know, it can evoke emotions and images and smells and sensations, and that is what I set out to do.

~ Erin M. Truesdale

Subtlety is the mark of confidence and is thus by far the hardest thing for a writer to achieve.

~ Noah Lukeman

It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

~ George Orwell

Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I believed I truly belonged.

~ J.k. Rowling

I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my fourth volume—and no farther than to my first day's life—'tis demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty-four days more life to write just now, than when I first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it—on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back—

~ Laurence Sterne

I’ve written for the waste basket so often that we’ve become friends. He writes too, but it’s mostly garbage.

~ Ryan Lilly

To find the courage to keep writing after constant failure is awesomeness. Winning is eminent.

~ Sereda Aleta Dailey

Fall makes me think that if I fail horribly at this art thing, and then fail horribly with this writing thing, I'll go run a pumpkin patch.

~ Tyler Hojberg

A warm sunny evening, the plash and gurgle of the waves in the rock pools, the rush of the cold gin. I thought for the first time of my novel, abandoned, all these years, and I came up, unprompted, with the perfect title. Octet. Octet by Logan Mountstuart. Perhaps I will surprise them all, yet.

~ William Boyd

From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to share my

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I realize that a writer's business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed-and trying to save him-again and again, forever.

~ John Irving

Desire never stops. Equilibrium is temporary. The self-revelation is never simple, and it cannot guarantee the hero a satisfying life from that day forward. since a great story is always a living thing, its ending is no more final and certain than any other part of the story.

~ John Truby

You must feel it from within. You must want to write the book. You must desire to write the book

~ Emily Gowor

You wanted to show everyone you could write about the black heart of a killer. And all the while pretending you don't even have your own dark desires.

~ Naoyuki Ochiai

I couldn’t very well make a special delivery to the door of the constabulary now could I? And he’d have made the perfect scapegoat. That aura of misery he wraps himself in. So Byronesque. He’s too immersed in his own guilt to ever suspect it in another.

~ Ella J. Fraser

Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.

~ P.d. James

I am a storyteller, spiraling fantasy and reality into mystical tales. That eerie space between fact and fiction, where only the brightest light can scare the shadows—you will find me there.

~ Sara Frost

Writing a mystery is like drawing a picture and then cutting it into little pieces that you offer to your readers one piece at a time, thus allowing them the chance to put the jigsaw puzzle together by the end of the book.

~ Ashwin Sanghi

It takes it out of you, writing with heart. And it was just for me really. Sort of a confirmation to myself that my inner diva can still make love to the keyboard when she’s in the mood. I have to keep her roped and gagged when I’m writing for the newspapers. They don’t like her at all. They don’t want love. They want a quick tryst in a motel room that’s forgotten in a few hours.

~ Colin Cotterill

I like to let ideas simmer in my brain until they're well done.

~ Silvia Villalobos

Writing the middle of a novel is a lot like driving through Texas. You think it's never going to end, and the scenery looks the same.

~ Carolyn Wheat

Payne sought clarification. “Vertical or horizontal?”“Horizontal, of course.”“Sorry but I can’t help you.” “Will you pipe down for a minute? Naturally she was dead since I work at a cemetery. Her face struck a chord though. So, I rummaged around in the old Rory memory bank, and Emily is what rings a bell. Didn’t we go to school with an Emily? Tenth or eleventh grade, if I recall it correctly.

~ Ed Lynskey

Personal essay writing that incites the mind and instigates personal growth involves examination and re-examination, a process of noticing and reflecting upon what a person perceives. Essayistic writing is an osmotic process wherein a person intuitively absorbs information and ideas, allows inchoate thoughts to gestate in the unconscious mind, and then consciously places the emergent strands of language and logic into an orderly and expressive format.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Dare to be the person you were designed to be.

~ Audrey Moralez

Poetry is a connection to a change within you.

~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

As we change, our writing changes too. You cannot write the same poem twice. And that's a good thing.

~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

While I was trying to write, I was trying to grow.

~ Whitaker Chambers

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that o

~ William Faulkner

the thing you are mostafraid to writewrite that-- advice to young writers

~ Nayyirah Waheed

I think the hard work of writing is just how long a book is terrible before it's good.

~ Leigh Bardugo

The best advice is not to write what you know, it's to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best- write the story you want to read.

~ Austin Kleon

The truth is that writing is simply not reliable. You can't count on it to be there just because you've made some space for it. In fact, making space might make it disappear. You tell yourself you can't write in the middle of your daily life, with all its distractions and commitments, and when you finally clear the decks, light off for someplace scenic or at least private, you sit there completely paralyzed. You have devoted yourself to writing, but it has not returned your devotion. If writing were a person, you would be in an abusive relationship. The healthy thing to do would be to get a restraining order and shut it right out of your heart.

~ Kim Addonizio

I used to hammer away at the idea of simplicity.In both fiction and non-fiction, there's only one question and one answer. 'What happened?' the reader asks. 'This is what happened,' the writer responds. 'This...and this...and this, too.' Keep it simple. It's the only sure way home.

~ Stephen King

Some general advice about writing:WRITE MORE, DO OTHER STUFF LESS.

~ Brian K. Vaughan

Life is a book. Read it. But do not forget to write yours.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita