Many who put pen to paper find that it is a great encouragement to read what others have to say about the craft of writing. Here are a handful of quotes meant to give encouragement and inspire the writer.
“Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” ~Ray Bradbury
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ~Sylvia Plath
“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.” ~Vita Sackville-West
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” ~Mark Twain
Humorous Quotes on Writing
“I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.” ~English Professor (Name Unknown), Ohio University
“Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.”
~William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"
“Every writer I know has trouble writing.” ~Joseph Heller
Thoughtful Writing Quotes
“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.” ~Isaac Bashevis Singer
“Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.” ~E.L. Doctorow
“To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, and my sincere motive in scribbling at all.” ~Lord Byron
“Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason. They made no such demand upon those who wrote them.” ~Charles Caleb Colton
“It is impossible to discourage the real writers- they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.” ~Sinclair Lewis
“Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head.” ~From the movie Finding Forrester
“One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen.” ~Leo Tolstoy
“An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.” ~Gustave Flaubert
“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” ~Thomas Mann
“If you don’t have a sensation of apprehension when you set out to find a story and a swagger when you sit down to write it, you are in the wrong business.” ~A.M. Rosenthal
“You cannot write in a chimney with charcoal.” ~Assyrian Proverb
“Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.” ~Ernest Hemmingway
“Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death - fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, and constant.” ~Edna Ferber
“The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax.” ~Alfred Kazin
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one was not driven on by some demon who one can neither resist nor understand.” ~George Orwell
“One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.” ~Hart Crane
Nathan Collier - Nathan Joseph Collier grew up on Lake Erie in the town of Sheffield, Ohio. He spent his college years at Harding University in Searcy ...
