Writing Life Quotes

• If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Trying, Paint

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.39, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

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• How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

  Annie Dillard

  Life, Wisdom, Travel

  "The Writing Life". Tikkun magazine, Volume 3, Number 6, 1988.

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• Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Book, Writing

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

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• What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get it? Writing requires you make sacrifices. Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.

  Sandra Brown

  Giving Up, Hard Work, Writing

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• I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Thinking, Years

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.39, Simon and Schuster

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• It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.

  Stephen King

  Believe, Writing, People

  Stephen King (2000). “On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft”, p.92, Simon and Schuster

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• We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Humility, Crafts

  "New York Journal-American" Newspaper, July 11, 1961.

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• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Bad Ass, Typewriters

  "Exclusive: Never-Before-Seen Photos from Hemingway's Childhood" by James Joiner, www.esquire.com. October 24, 2013.

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• Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

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• It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.

  C. J. Cherryh

  Writing, Long, Garbage

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• Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Quality, Produce

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• A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Writing, Men

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 6 Apr. 1775)

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• If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Caring, Tools

  Stephen King (2000). “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”, p.174, Simon and Schuster

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• A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order - willed, faked, and so brought into being.

  Annie Dillard

  Order, Schedules, Reason

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• Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Paper, Whole

  John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.611, Penguin

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• 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

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• Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Paper, Excuse

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• I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'

  Saul Bellow

  Love, Writing, Heart

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• If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.

  David Brin

  Writing, Family Friends, Family Life

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• Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.

  John Steinbeck

  Great Writing, Writers And Writing, Whole

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• The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.

  Annie Dillard

  Greed, Spirit, Sensations

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• I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

  Roald Dahl

  Hate, Book, Reading

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• How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.

  Annie Dillard

  Motivational, Hands, Order

  "The Writing Life". Book by Annie Dillard, 1989.

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• For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

  Catherine Drinker Bowen

  Healing, Writing, Realization

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