Writing Quotes

Do activities you're passionate about - which make your heart and soul feel perky - including things like working out, cooking, painting, writing, yoga, hiking, walking, swimming, being in nature, being around art, or reading inspiring books.

~ Karen Salmansohn

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.

~ Gabriel García Márquez

I was a Social Science major in college, with an emphasis in secondary education. I took as many courses on the American colonial era and westward expansion as I could. This turned out to be wonderful preparation for writing fantasy novels.

~ Rae Carson

Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it.

~ George R. R. Martin

The simplest and cheapest of all reforms within institutional science is to switch from the passive to the active voice in writing about science.

~ Rupert Sheldrake

When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

~ Vernor Vinge

My own writing has perhaps more of an American flavor than a British one, but that's because the stories I've so far written have needed it. 'Empire State,' 'Seven Wonders' and 'The Age Atomic' are all very place-centric, where the setting itself is almost a character. But there is a universality to story that isn't just limited to science fiction.

~ Adam Christopher

I wrote about a bird that cleaned a crocodile's teeth. The story was so good that my teacher could not believe that a ten-year-old could write that well. I was even punished because my teacher thought I'd lied about writing it! I had always loved to write, but it was then that I realized that I had a talent for it.

~ Brian Jacques

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.

~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Writing is very cathartic for me. As a teacher, I hear many students say that writing can be painful and exhausting. It can be, but ultimately I believe that if you push through, the process is healing and exhilarating.

~ Francesca Lia Block

When I was in graduate school, I had a teacher who said to me, 'Women writers should marry somebody who thinks writing is cute. Because if they really realised what writing was, they would run a mile.'

~ Lorrie Moore

My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: 'Writers write because they weren't invited to a party.' That always struck so true, and people always nod their heads when they hear that. Especially writers.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

'The Turner Diaries' is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.

~ Gore Vidal

I remember, in school, writing Janet Jackson and Michael Jackson and asking them to come get me out of class. I would imagine them running down the hall and asking my teacher, 'Ms. Daniels, can we get Missy out of class? We're here to see Missy.'

~ Missy Elliott

I could never have pictured myself writing a book when I was 25 years old. My mom was an English teacher but I wasn't that way growing up.

~ Tony Dungy

I have always admired teachers because teaching, like the priesthood, medicine and writing, is a vocation. You don't become a teacher because you want wealth. It is the same with writing.

~ F. Sionil José

Kathy Dewar, my high-school English teacher, introduced me to journalism. From the moment I wrote my first article for the student paper, I convinced myself that having my name in print - writing in English, interviewing Americans - validated my presence here.

~ Jose Antonio Vargas

I tried writing fiction as a little kid, but had a teacher humiliate me, so didn't write again until I was a senior in college.

~ Janet Fitch

I wanted to be a Teacher with a big T: teach the whole planet. It led me into writing and speaking to large groups.

~ Jack Canfield

My first true lesson in writing came from Mr. Bowden when I was 16. At my high school, he was the teacher known to be the very best at literature and writing.

~ Jeff Lindsay

I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal, because if you lose it, then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal, but I always write everything down... Anytime I travel, I try and fill up notepads.

~ Garrett Hedlund

I often think that the prime directive for me as a teacher of writing is akin to that for a physician, which is this: do no harm.

~ Chang-Rae Lee

I made my drama teacher cry. I only took drama to get out of writing papers in English and the teacher was this thespian Broadway geek and here I was this Italian guy from Staten Island and I would put her in tears.

~ Vinny Guadagnino

Any writing teacher tells you to write what you know, and for better or for worse, Washington is a world I know well.

~ Kristin Gore

I've always written. When I was in school, the only teacher who ever liked me was my creative writing teacher. I used to enter poetry competitions, and I don't think I ever lost one. So I had the idea for a while of being some kind of poet.

~ Justin Townes Earle

When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.

~ Tom Perrotta

Writing, I'm convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.

~ Dan Simmons

I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.

~ Karen Thompson Walker

In the world of opinion writing, there's something called the 'to be sure' paragraph. A sort of rhetorical antibiotic, it seeks to defend against critics by injecting a tiny bit of counter-argument before moving on with the main point.

~ Meghan Daum

My breakthrough was when I began to write during my commute, at first taking notes on my Palm Pilot, and then moving on to writing full prose on the tiny QWERTY keyboard of my iPaq smartphone. I got so fast that I was averaging 400 words during the 35 minutes or so I spent on the subway each way, or 800 words round trip.

~ Peter V. Brett

One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. I always write about women who are marginalized, who have no means or resources and somehow manage to get out of those situations with incredible strength - and that is more important than anything.

~ Isabel Allende

A number of bloggers in economics and the financial sector have risen to prominence through the sheer strength of their work. Note it was not their family connections nor ties to Ivy League schools or elite banks, but rather the strength of their research, analysis and writing.

~ Barry Ritholtz

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

~ Herman Hesse

For correct writing, the cultivation of patience and mental accuracy is essential. Throughout the young author's period of apprenticeship, he must keep reliable dictionaries and textbooks at his elbow; eschewing as far as possible that hasty extemporaneous manner of writing which is the privilege of more advanced students.

~ H. P. Lovecraft

You know, writing is really difficult, and it takes a real patience and a skill. I don't know if I have that. I admire it in others, so much, and I envy it.

~ Adam Scott

I think writing novels has taught me more about the value of patience and being organized. I've learned to use timelines and wikis to track decisions and make sure everything still fits together. It's both easier and harder than writing short fiction.

~ Ken Liu

Writing novels is largely about endurance and patience. I take a lot of breaks, hit walls, and go do something else while I think things through. But I do it every day, and I try to treat it as a job, something that is not dictated by whimsy or muses.

~ Adam Mansbach

Writing is boring, very boring, and it takes so much patience.

~ Ingmar Bergman

For me, most writing consists of siphoning out useless pre-story matter, cutting and cutting and cutting, what seems to be endless rewriting, and what is entailed in all that is patience, and waiting, and false starts, and dead ends, and really, in a way, nerve.

~ Deborah Eisenberg

Writing takes a lot of patience. It usually takes me a year to write a book. One time, it took me 14 years to write a book, not that I worked on it every day.

~ Avi