Writing Quotes

At the time we were all convinced that we had to speak, write,and publish as quickly as possible and as much as possible and that this was necessary for the good of mankind. Thousands of us published and wrote in an effort to teach others, all the while disclaiming and abusing one another. Without taking note of the fact that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the simplest question of life, the question of what is right and what is wrong, we all went on talking without listening to one another.

~ Leo Tolstoy

The famed author Robert Lewis Stevenson declared that he'd trained his Brownies to be writers. As he slept, they would whisper fantastic plots in his ear -- for example, the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and the diabolical Mr. Hyde, and that episode in Olalla when a young man from an old Spanish family bites his sister's hand.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

Ah, I do so love this charmingly rustic, elvin kingdom!-Baozhai

~ Mar Mai

When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.

~ Charles Bukowski

Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.

~ Joseph Campbell

If only these walls could talk…the world would know just how hard it is to tell the truth in a story in which everyone’s a liar.

~ Gregg Olsen

After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.

~ Gertrude Stein

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

~ Oscar Wilde

Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.

~ Oscar Wilde

And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.

~ Neil Gaiman

Persistence can look a lot like stupid.

~ Kristen Lamb

It takes great courage to write great books. Find your courage and find your voice.

~ Kristen Lamb

Action is the pulse of any good story, but the character is the heart. If the action has no consequence to the character, the story loses heart.

~ Linda W. Yezak

Most writing is done between the mind and the hand, not between the hand and the page.

~ Janet Burroway

The more we are willing to separate from distraction and step into the open arms of boredom, the more writing will get on the page.

~ Ann Patchett

Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.

~ William Strunk Jr.

Everyone should read, we say, but we act as if only those with special talent should write.

~ Roy Peter Clark

Polysyllables obfuscate a preponderant ignorance with so much more style and panache.

~ John Patrick Lowrie

Writing started out as a kind of therapy for me. I was bullied mercilessly in high school, and I lived vicariously through Kitty. She was everything I wanted to be; strong, smart, witty, and above all else, she didn't care what other people thought about her. But after a while, she started to take on a personality of her own, and I was suddenly more interested in her story than I was in mine.

~ Caitlin Elyse

To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not--this is the beginning of writing.

~ Roland Barthes

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

~ Alain De Botton

Above all things -- read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied.

~ Ngaio Marsh

In older myths, the dark road leads downward into the Underworld, where Persephone is carried off by Hades, much against her will, while Ishtar descends of her own accord to beat at the gates of Hell. This road of darkness lies to the West, according to Native American myth, and each of us must travel it at some point in our lives. The western road is one of trials, ordeals, disasters and abrupt life changes — yet a road to be honored, nevertheless, as the road on which wisdom is gained. James Hillman, whose theory of 'archetypal psychology' draws extensively on Greco–Roman myth, echoes this belief when he argues that darkness is vital at certain periods of life, questioning our modern tendency to equate mental health with happiness. It is in the Underworld, he reminds us, that seeds germinate and prepare for spring. Myths of descent and rebirth connect the soul's cycles to those of nature.

~ Terri Windling

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

~ Anne Lamott

This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address.

~ Barbara Kingsolver

For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going. If you don't let it get out of hand, it can be canalized into writing. In this country where people love to be nonjudgmental when they can be, which translates as, on the whole, lenient, there are an awful lot of bubble reputations floating around that one wouldn't be doing one's job if one didn't itch to prick.

~ Christopher Hitchens

I'd been writing for as long as I could remember, but once I read Otherworld, I'd stopped writing original stories to focus on fan fiction. It was such a rich, exciting world that I couldn't think of writing anything else.

~ Allison Van Diepen

You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.

~ Haruki Murakami

Is it possible to say It was a beautiful morning at the end of November without feeling like Snoopy?

~ Umberto Eco

Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life, in understanding and in creating. There is no measuring in time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confidence in the storms of spring without fear that after them may come no summer.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Write all the time. I believe in writing every day, at least a thousand words a day. We have a strange idea about writing: that it can be done, and done well, without a great deal of effort. Dancers practice every day, musicians practice every day, even when they are at the peak of their careers – especially then. Somehow, we don’t take writing as seriously. But writing – writing wonderfully – takes just as much dedication.

~ Theodora Goss

For all my longer works (i.e. the novels) I write chapter outlines so I can have the pleasure of departing from them later on.

~ Garth Nix

grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

If you’re a writer, your first duty, a duty you owe to yourself and your readers, and to your writing itself, is to become wonderful. To become the best writer you can possibly be.

~ Theodora Goss

I believe you have to write every day–make the time. It’s about having an organized mind instead of a chaotic and untidy one. There is a myth that writers are bohemian and do what they like in their own way. Real writers are the most organized people on the planet. You have to be. You’re doing the work and running your own business as well. It’s an incredibly organized state.[Also reading]…one of the things reading does do is discipline your mind. There are no writers who are not readers.

~ Jeanette Winterson

Collaborating on a film script involves two people sitting in a room separated by the silence of two minds working together.

~ Darlene Craviotto

I write weird stories. I don't know why I like weirdness so much. Myself, I'm a very realistic person. I don't trust anything New Age -- or reincarnation, dreams, Tarot, horoscopes. I don't trust anything like that at all. I wake up at 6 in the morning and go to bed at 10, jogging every day and swimming, eating healthy food. I'm very realistic. But when I write, I write weird. That's very strange. When I'm getting more and more serious, I'm getting more and more weird. When I want to write about the reality of society and the world, it gets weird. Many people ask me why, and I can't answer that. But I recognized when I was interviewing those 63 ordinary people -- they were very straightforward, very simple, very ordinary, but their stories were sometimes very weird. That was interesting.

~ Haruki Murakami

We writers are a crazy group. I can't think of any other profession where the actual work is deep within, uncomfortable, and wanting out.

~ C.j. Heck

... a writer concocts a different story for every reader.

~ Mike Bryan

I must write now and quickly, before I begin to prefer the perfect version that lives in my head.

~ Lettie Prell