Inspiring Quotes on Writing

Edited by Jeff Soares

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind Rudyard Kipling Of making many books, there is no end. Bible, Ecclesiastes 12:12 Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. Jorge Luis Borges Ideas are to literature what light is to painting. Paul Bourget A well written life is almost as rare as a well spent one. Thomas Carlyle

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero but a bad novel tells us the truth about the author. G.K. Chesterson My homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; poetry= the best words in the best order. Samuel Taylor Coleridge All writing comes from the grace of God. Ralph Waldo Emerson, If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urnis worth any number of old ladies. William Faulkner Often you must turn your stylus to erase, if you hope to write anything worth a second reading. Horace, 35 30 BC

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it. Samuel Johnson He writes nothing whose writings are not read. Martial, 1st Century AD If you steal from one author its plagiarism, if you steal from many, its research. Wilson Mizner Satire should, like a polished razor keen, would with a touch that scarcely felt or seen. Mary Wortley Montagu If theres a book you really want to read but it hasnt been written yet, then you must write it. Toni Morrison True ease in writing comes from art, not chance. Alexander pope

Our passions shape our books, repose writes them in the intervals. Marcel Proust An honest tale speeds best being plainly told. Shakespeare Keep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh. George Bernard Shaw Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Natures chief masterpiece is writing well. John Sheffield Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. Anthony Trollope There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily. Anthony Trollope

Literature is a form of permanent insurrection. Mario Varga Llosa Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. Mark Twain If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing. Benjamin Franklin In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can't read. If they could read their stuff, they'd stop writing. Will Rogers There is creative reading as well as creative writing. Ralph Waldo Emerson My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.

Anais Nin There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. Ernest Hemingway I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it. Ernest Hemingway When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. Ernest Hemingway Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up. Ernest Hemingway Television has raised writing to a new low. Samuel Goldwyn

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business. John Steinbeck Good writing is like a windowpane. George Orwell All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. F. Scott Fitzgerald True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those who move easiest have learned to dance. Alexander Pope Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers. Isaac Asimov If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it. Tennessee Williams When I stop working the rest

of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing. Tennessee Williams Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. Robert A. Heinlein That isn't writing at all, it's typing. Truman Capote Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself. Truman Capote To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make. Truman Capote

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. Flannery O'Connor The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen. Lee Iacocca Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence. Samuel Beckett Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read. Ross Perot Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something

else. Gloria Steinem Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action. Paul J. Meyer Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith. Gore Vidal In writing and politicking, its best not to think about it, just do it. Gore Vidal I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous. Keith Richards Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. Hermann Hesse There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and

an art of writing. Clarence Day Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why. James Joyce Far more thought and care go into the composition of any prominent ad in a newspaper or magazine than go into the writing of their features and editorials. Marshall McLuhan When Shakespeare was writing, he wasn't writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around. Ken Kesey It's a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he

can by practicing it. W. H. Auden Easy reading is damn hard writing. Nathaniel Hawthorne Writing with you is the only thing that keeps me alive. David Hackworth The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. Gustave Flaubert The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work. Augusten Burroughs Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people. Ronald Dahl

I am a drinker with writing problems. Brendan Behan Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness. Thomas Carlyle If something in your writing gives support to people in their lives, that's more than just entertainment-which is what we writers all struggle to do, to touch people. Dean Koontz Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled. Dean Koontz I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it, for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it. Dean Koontz

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations. Raymond Chandler Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck. Iris Murdoch I don't care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, you're also writing your Oscar acceptance speech. Nora Ephron You fail only if you stop writing. Ray Bradbury You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. Ray Bradbury

Writing is hard work and bad for the health. E. B. White Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. E. B. White The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube. Norman Mailer Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing. Norman Mailer Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response. Mary Oliver

I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties. Agatha Christie Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period. Nicholas Sparks Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. Don Marquis If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves. Don Marquis The desire to write grows with writing.

Desiderius Erasmus Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once. Cyril Connolly One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there. Stephen Sondheim Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money. Moliere Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself. Terry Pratchett I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.

Erica Jong When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out. Alanis Morissette I like myself better when I'm writing regularly. Willie Nelson Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind. Rebecca West I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later. Ezra Pound

Learn as much by writing as by reading. Lord Acton Writing is the supreme solace. W. Somerset Maugham There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. W. Somerset Maugham Good writing comes from good reading. Charles Kuralt Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. Jorge Luis Borges For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live. Theodor Adorno Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage

to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation. Graham Greene I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge. Gwendolyn Brooks A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. Margaret Atwood For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live. Maynard James Keenan Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. Jules Renard

Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone. Amy Tan Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary. Francoise Sagan Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. John Updike Being so honest in my writing is cathartic. Brian Molko Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a

man's thinking or his writing. Isaac Bashevis Singer Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Laurie Anderson Good writing gives energy, whatever it is about. Marilyn Hacker The pleasure that I take in writing gets me interested in writing a poem. It's not a statement about what I think anybody else should be doing. For me, it's an interesting tension between interior and exterior. Marilyn Hacker Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books

which they could buy but do not like. Walter Benjamin The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot. Anne Sexton Writing is not the easiest way to make a living. Your work long hours, usually all by yourself. It is not a way to make money. Stephen Ambrose I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travelers. Michael Palin