Writing By Writers Quotes

• The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Teaching

  22 Copy quote

• There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Moving On, Powerful

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Feb 14, 2013

  99 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.

  Kingsley Amis

  Writing, Editing, Littles

  28 Copy quote

• The secret of getting ahead is getting started

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  101 Copy quote

• A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Reading, Hero

  1905 Heretics, ch.15.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Writing, Creativity, People

  41 Copy quote

• Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Creativity, Iron

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.137, Penguin

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Life, Being Alone, Writing

  37 Copy quote

• No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

  Robert Frost

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Collected Poems (1939) "Figure a Poem Makes"

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.

  Truman Capote

  Music, Writing, Creativity

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

  Philip Roth

  Work, Writing, Sisterhood

  1979 In the NewYorkTimes Book Review,15 Jul.

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Dog, Writing, Sisterhood

  Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Sun Also Rises”, p.37, Hamilton Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The road to hell is paved with leeks and potatoes

  Julie Powell

  Writing, Sisterhood, Skulls

  6 Copy quote

• A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

  Richard Bach

  Perseverance, Writing, Editing

  Richard Bach (2012). “A Gift of Wings”, p.9, Dell

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wisdom, Writing, Procrastination

  Statement on April 14, 1775. "Life of Samuel Johnson". Book by James Boswell. Volume II, 1791.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Inspirational, Funny, Writing

  24 Copy quote

• The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

  Stephen King

  Movie, Writing, Sisterhood

  FaceBook post by Stephen King from Feb 06, 2013

  74 Copy quote

  Show source

• It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

  Robert Benchley

  Inspirational, Funny, Time

  Quoted in Reader's Digest, Sept. 1949. According to Nigel Rees, Cassell's Humorous Quotations, the following appeared in Punch in 1924: " 'It took me nearly ten years to learn that I couldn't write.' 'I suppose you gave it up then?' 'Oh, no! By that time I had a reputation established.' " The issue referred to by Rees is 6 Feb., and the cartoonist is R. Curry.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• I try to leave out the parts readers skip.

  Elmore Leonard

  Writing, Trying, Reader

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

  Franz Kafka

  Inspirational, Fashion, Truth

  Franz Kafka (1995). “The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories”, Random House LLC

  339 Copy quote

  Show source

• Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Book, Writing

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

  Anais Nin

  Love, Writing, Heart

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Life, Sad, Writing

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.85, Anchor

  81 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

  Jack London

  Inspirational, Funny, Witty

  Jack London (2015). “Jack London on Adventure: Words of Wisdom from an Expert Adventurer”, p.5, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

• Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Schizophrenia, Form

  Interview in "Writers at Work" (The Paris Review Interviews), 8th Series, 1988.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source