Writing Quotes

I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author..]

~ Henning Mankell

I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.

~ Gore Vidal

How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition which is my person! Style, taste, individual philosophy, subjectivity, cultural background, real experience, psychology, talent, tricks of the trade: all the elements that make what I write recognizable as mine seem to me a cage that restricts my possibilities. If I were only a hand, a severed hand that grasps a pen and writes...who would move this hand? The anonymous throng? The spirit of the times? The collective unconscious? I do not know.

~ Italo Calvino

All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.

~ Michel De Montaigne

It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.

~ Julia Cameron

Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say.Of course those who write short books have even less to say.

~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Work. Don't Think. Relax.

~ Ray Bradbury

I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit.

~ Stephen King

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work.

~ Robert Frost

But once an original book has been written-and no more than one or two appear in a century-men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language.

~ Pierre Boulle

In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul

~ Albert Camus

As always, the blessed relief of starting, a feeling that was like falling into a hole filled with bright light.As always, the glum knowledge that he would not write as well as he wanted to write. As always the terror of not being able to finish, of accelerating into a brick wall. As always, the marvelous joyful nervy feeling of journey begun.

~ Stephen King

We do not wait for inspiration. We work because we've jolly well got to. But when all is said and done, we toil at this particular job because it's turned out to be our particular job, and in a weird sort of way I suppose we may be said to like it.

~ Ngaio Marsh

My lips are fierce with passion. My heart spins fiery beats. A rhythm lives within my fingers and dances in my feet.

~ Coco J. Ginger

The music lets me see the story but the story doesn't let me write the words.

~ Elizabeth J. Kolodziej

I am a drinker with writing problems.

~ Brendan Behan

A writer is very much like the captain on a star ship facing the unknown. When you face the blank page and you have no idea where you're going. It can be terrifying, but it can also be the adventure of a lifetime.

~ Michael Piller

I realized Michael was right. I mean, I am always writing in this journal. And I do compose a lot of poetry, and write a lot of notes and emails and stuff. I mean, I feel like I am always writing. I do it so much, I never even thought about it as a talent. It's just something I do all the time, like breathing.

~ Meg Cabot

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

~ Charles Dickens

If you hear voices, you’re a lunatic. If you write down what they say, you’re an author.

~ Dani Harper

Writing a novel is like going a great distance to take a small shit.

~ Harlan Ellison

Goals are dreams with a deadline.

~ Napoleon Hill

A migraine is the cockblock of writing.

~ Don Roff

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

~ Ernest Hemingway

I write for the kid in me. . . . Often when I’m working on a story, I’ll find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where they’ve taken the story. It’s as if they have a life all their own. What I do is create them and then let them go on to entertain me. . . .

~ Elvira Woodruff

I'm not trying to please anyone. I'm just trying to write a damn book.

~ Richard P. Denney

First and foremost, I am me. I'm real. I don't write to impress. I write to express.

~ Raebeth Mcgee-Buda

Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

There were no absolutes in fiction, no certain way to deliver what was needed. So it was no surprise most technical writers considered novel-writing a gateway to madness.

~ S.a. Reid

You have to find your own shtick. A Picasso always looks like Picasso painted it. Hemingway always sounds like Hemingway. A Beethoven symphony always sounds like a Beethoven symphony. Part of being a master is learning how to sing in nobody else's voice but your own.

~ Hugh Macleod

You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.

~ Will Self

I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

All stories are love stories.

~ Robert Mcliam Wilson

I never waited for my Irish Cream coffee to be the right temperature, with a storm happening outside and my fireplace crackling ... I wrote every day, at home, in the office, whether I felt like it or not, I just did it.

~ Stephen J. Cannell

الكتابة مثل الشعوذة : لايكفي إخراج أرنب من القبعة ، بل يجب عمل ذلك بأناقة وطريقة ممتعة

~ Isabel Allende

Fighting and writing’s deepest layers of beauty lie not only in the physical and mental realms of what we know, but also as an incognizable instinct, a realm we will never fully know but will forever feel.

~ Cameron Conaway

If you don't think too good, don't think too much.

~ Ted Williams

We all know writing is a reclusive, lonely endeavour. It just is. But nobody writes alone.

~ Iain Reid

Murphy is a writer's best friend, but you have to keep an eye on him, or he'll steal the silver.

~ Patricia C. Wrede