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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  83 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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  51 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  90 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Benjamin Franklin

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  55 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  C. J. Cherryh

  Writing, Long, Garbage

  47 Copy quote

• 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

  41 Copy quote

• A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.

  Annie Dillard

  Schedules, Chaos, Catching

  8 Copy quote

• Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, People, Trying

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.834, e-artnow

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.

  William S. Burroughs

  Change, Trying, Muse

  William S Burroughs (2012). “The Western Lands”, p.10, Penguin UK

  41 Copy quote

  Show source

• How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.

  Annie Dillard

  Inspirational, Life, Hours

  Attributed to Annie Dillard in "The Writing Life", Book by Annie Dillard, 1989.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life.

  Annie Dillard

  Sweet, Good Life, Reading

  9 Copy quote

• One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.

  Annie Dillard

  Inspirational, Life, Book

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.88, Canongate Books

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair.

  Annie Dillard

  Gears, Belief, Desks

  Annie Dillard (2009). “The Writing Life”, p.11, Harper Collins

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Annie Dillard

  Time, Hands, Schedules

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

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.

  Annie Dillard

  Inspirational, Good Life, Good Day

  17 Copy quote

• You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

  William S. Burroughs

  Fake People, Quality, Meals

  William S. Burroughs (1988). “The Western Lands”, Penguin Group USA

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Time, Powerful, Book

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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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)

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  13 Copy quote

  Show source