Writing Quotes

Lunatics are writers whose works write them, Bat. Not all lunatics are writers, Mrs. Rey-believe me. But most writers are lunatics, Bat-believe me. The human world is made up of stories, not people.

~ David Mitchell

I make books because I love them as objects; because I want to put the pictures and the words together, because I want to tell a story.

~ Audrey Niffenegger

Richard put away the Narnia books, convinced, sadly, that they were an allegory; that an author (whom he had trusted) had been attempting to slip something past him. He had had the same disgust with the Professor Challenger stories, when the bull-necked old professor became a convert to Spiritualistm; it was not that Richard had any problems believing in ghosts - Richard believed, with no problems or contradictions, in everything - but Conan Doyle was preaching, and it showed through the words. Richard was young, and innoncent in his fashion, and believed that authors should be trusted, and that there should be nothing hidden beneath the surface of a story.

~ Neil Gaiman

Be true to the writer within you; tell the story you're dying to tell in exactly the way you wish to tell it, and don't trust anyone who tries to sway you otherwise.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

David had left her,taking his insane jealousy with him.

~ Mary Papas

You know what pulp is, Mr. Tallis? It's the flesh of a luscious fruit, mashed down into an incredible, half liquid richness. so saturated with flavor that it fills your whole body, not just your mouth.

~ Mike Carey

All good writing is persuasive writing; persuading the reader to buy what you're selling, to side with you, to believe the tales you tell.

~ Ramsey Isler

Every story is an act of trust between a writer and a reader: each story, in the end, is social. Whatever a writer sets down can help or harm a community of which he or she is a part. When I write I can imagine a child in California wishing to give away what he’s just seen- a wild animal fleeing though creosote cover in the desert, casting a bright-eyed backward glance or three lines of overheard conversation that seem to contain everything we need understand to repair the gaping rift between body and soul. I look back at that boy turning in glee beneath his pigeons and know it can take a lifetime to convey what you mean, to find the opening. You watch, you set it down. Then you try again.

~ Barry López

A daydreamer is a writer just waiting for pen and paper.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train, people that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.

~ Ben Okri

I love snowflakes simply for the reason that each one is unique—nonidentical to zillions of crystalized counterparts.  It's a difficult notion to wrap your brain around, and yet it reminds me that amidst the innumerable stories told throughout the ages, a distinctly new one rests on the tip of an author's pen.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Stories not only give us a much needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick.

~ Lisa Cron

I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I know there's a house under there, and I'm pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That's how I feel. It's like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that says: If I sit down and do this, everything will come out OK.

~ Stephen King

The voices in my head wouldn't shut up, so I let them write their story.

~ Shandy L. Kurth

At the heart of the impulse to tell stories is a mystery so profound.

~ Dennis Covington

This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories.

~ Ben Okri

The only thing worth thinking about, when I write a story, is whether I like it, whether I want to write it, whether it excites me.

~ Theodora Goss

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser―in case you thought optimism was dead.

~ Robert Brault

Fritz had to stop himself from interrupting when Karl spoke about the difficulty of working. Stories are just as hard as clocks to put together, and they can go wrong just as easily--as we shall soon see with Fritz's own story in a page or two. Still, Fritz was an optimist, and Karl was a pessimist, and that makes all the difference in the world.

~ Philip Pullman

I stretched out on the bed and slept. It was twilight when I awakened and turned on the light. I felt better, no longer tired. I went to the typewriter and sat before it. My thought was to write a sentence, a single perfect sentence. If I could write one good sentence I could write two and if I could write two I could write three, and if I could write three I could write forever. But suppose I failed? Suppose I had lost all of my beautiful talent? Suppose it had burned up in the fire of Biff Newhouse smashing my nose or Helen Brownell dead forever? What would happen to me? Would I go to Abe Marx and become a busboy again? I had seventeen dollars in my wallet. Seventeen dollars and the fear of writing. I sat erect before the typewriter and blew on my fingers. Please God, please Knut Hamsun, don’t desert me now. I started to write and I wrote:“The time has come,” the Walrus said,“To talk of many things:Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—Of cabbages—and kings—”I looked at it and wet my lips. It wasn’t mine, but what the hell, a man had to start someplace.

~ John Fante

The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn't mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater.

~ Flannery O'connor

As a writer, my job is to change your perspective, and make you think outside the box.

~ Mary Sage Nguyen

I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs. You refer to yourself in order to understand other people. That's the novelist's gift, isn't it?

~ V.s. Naipaul

If he (John Adams) could not control events, he could at least record them for posterity – perhaps the ultimate form of control.

~ Joseph J. Ellis

Tolstoy does not tell us how things look to the author; he tells us how they look to the characters. In short, he does not use simile and metaphor. (That astonishing assertion in Wood’s review is what got me started reading Tolstoy in the first place. How can anyone write without using metaphor and simile? That would be like—never mind.)

~ John Mark Reynolds

Peter Aykroyd has a wonderful eye for the telling detail, cameos that stick in the mind. Thse are the little touches that make it past come alive.

~ J.j. Scarisbrick

He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes, to shuttle between the human and the natural perspective. Why might this be interesting, or even inspiring? Perhaps because unhappiness can stem from only having one perspective to play with.

~ Alain De Botton

No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to remind myself what an asshole I was?

~ Benjamin Alire Sáenz

I've been through so many things in life, and I have come to deduce one thing above all else: I care for nothing in this world save writing, books, everything else is an obstruction; it will always come second.

~ Ndiritu Wahome

The sacred soul writes the sacred words.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

These poems are cupsthat I pour my love into.Here, Drink!

~ Kamand Kojouri

You should be more carefulwhen you move, my dearwhat with you...spilling moonlightinto my poem, with a mereflick of your hand.

~ Sanober Khan

Poems arrive. They hide in feelings and images, in weeds and delivery vans, daring us to notice and give them form with our words. They take us to an invisible world where light and dark, inside and outside meet.

~ Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge

Each morning the winds of the city moan and weep with lost souls clinging to hope of reliving the memories of yesterday.

~ Jason E. Hodges

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, so what happens when the person's eyes are unavailable to look into? You read their words.

~ La Kata E.k.

when i write of you, my deari am holding youin the most exquisiteways.

~ Sanober Khan

sometimes i am not sure.if i am writing the poemor the poemis writing me.

~ Sanober Khan

To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.

~ Mark Nepo

I was asked once why I write poetry. I said, why do you breath?

~ Shannon Lynette

poems are small moments of enlightenment

~ Natalie Goldberg