The Power Of Words 129 Of The Most Inspiring Quotes (Selected Just For Writers)
“I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.” Henry David Thoreau
“A writer lives, at least, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes.” William Sansom
"However great a man's natural talent may be, the art of writing cannot be learned all at once." Jean Jacques Rousseau
“... only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.” Anton Chekhov
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." Cyril Connolly
"A writer is working when he's staring out of the window." Burton Rascoe
"The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention." Ezra Pound
“Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped.” Lillian Helman
"Write in recollection and amazement for yourself." Jack Kerouac
"If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." Toni Morrison
"To be clear is the first duty of a writer; to charm and to please are graces to be acquired later." Brander Matthews
"The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly… Once you've got some words looking back at you, you can take two or three - throw them away and look for others." Bernard Malamud
"In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give to your style." Sydney Smith
"…you have to develop a conscience and if on top of that you have talent so much the better. But if you have talent without conscience, you are just one of many thousand journalists." F. Scott Fitzgerald
"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." Oscar Wilde
"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork." Peter de Vries
"The writer's duty is to keep on writing…" William Styron
"Whether or not you write well, write bravely." Bill Stout
“Caress the detail, the divine detail." Vladimir Nabokov
"Never trust the artist. Trust the tale." D.H. Lawrence
"…your reader is at least as bright as you are." William Maxwell
"Use the right word and not its second cousin." Mark Twain
"The first draft of anything is sh*t." Ernest Hemingway
"Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write." Robert Penn Warren
"You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing." Doris Lessing
"The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting." Arthur Schopenhauer
"I seat myself at the typewriter and hope, and lurk." Mignon Eberhart
"Stick to the point." W. Somerset Maugham
"Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long." Leonard S. Bernstein
"I don't like to write, but I love to have written." Michael Kanin
"A woman must have money and room of her own if she is to write fiction." Virginia Woolf
"The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter." Marcel Proust
"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining…researching… talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing." E.L. Doctorow
"When genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot." D.H. Lawrence
“If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average." Derek Walcott
"You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country." Robert Frost
"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Mark Twain
"I write the first sentence and trust in God for the next." Laurence Sterne
"Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective." Ernest Hemingway
"Write what should not be forgotten…" Isabel Allende
"Too many writers are trying to write with too shallow an education. Whether they go to college or not is immaterial… a good writer needs a sense of the history of literature to be successful as a writer." James Kisner
"In a writer there must always be two people – the writer and the critic." Leo Tolstoy
“Write without pay until somebody offers to pay." Mark Twain
“The first rule, indeed by itself virtually a sufficient condition for good style, is to have something to say." Arthur Schopenhauer
“Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward…" Franz Kafka
"You have typewriters, presses. And a huge audience. How about raising hell?" Jenkin Lloyd Jones
"Revise and revise and revise the best thought will come after the printer has snatched away the copy." Michael Morahan
"Even the most productive writers are expert dawdlers…" Donald M. Murray
"Suspect all your favorite sentences." Kenneth Atchity
"Don't overwrite description in a story - you haven't got time." Elizabeth Spencer
"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Somerset Maugham
"Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style." Matthew Arnold
"Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing…." Bernard Malamud
"…writing comes more easily if you have something to say." Sholem Asch
"Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to." Somerset Maugham
"…therein is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident." H.L. Mencken
"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." Thomas Mann
"Thoughts fly and words go on foot. Therein lies all the drama of a writer." Julien Green
"You fail only if you stop writing." Ray Bradbury
‘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
"Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory." Chateaubriand
"A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment." William Sansom
“I never knew what was meant by choice of words. It was one word or none.” Robert Frost
“Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of them… Avoid all terms and expressions, old or new, that embody affectation.” Jacques Barzun
"You must write for yourself, above all. That is [your] only hope of creating something beautiful." Gustave Flaubert
"I always do the first line well, but I have trouble with the others." Moliere
"Writing well is at one and the same time good thinking, good feeling, and good expression; it is having wit, soul, and taste, all together." Buffon
"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make." Truman Capote
"All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath." F. Scott Fitzgerald
"You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else." Grace Paley
‘Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.’ Gloria Steinem
“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.” Ursula K Le Guin
“As regards plot I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against life.” Ivy Compton-Burnett
“If a publisher declines your manuscript, remember it is merely the decision of one fallible human being, and try another.” Sir Stanley Unwin
“An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.” Quentin Crisp
‘Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.’ John Steinbeck
“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” John Milton
“I never think at all when I write nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.” Don Marquis
“The book trade is a spiritual barometer of a nation's well-being.” John Buchan
“There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either.” Robert Graves
“The wastepaper basket is the writer’s best friend.” Isaac Singer
“While thought exists, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.” Cyril Connolly
"Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them." Allan Gurganus
"Writing is an adventure." Winston Churchill
“Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is truer.” Frederic Raphael
‘All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.’ P D James
"What a writer brings to any story is an attitude…" John Gregory Dunne
“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” Elmore Leonard
"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." E.L. Doctorow
“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof lie detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.” Ernest Hemingway
“Once a writer is born into a family, that family is doomed.” Czselaw Milosz
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” Henry David Thoreau
“Some of them say I've got an idealized vision of life... some of them say I use too many adjectives. Well I just say, "My dears! Why should I care? I've got something called readers.” Barbara Taylor Bradford
“Writing is a strange synthesis between the two parts of your mind: the analytical side and the side that knows nothing at all, and you have to allow the dreaming side free rein.” Rose Tremain
“Writing is just having a sheet of paper, a pen and not a shadow of an idea of what you are going to say.” Francoise Sagan
“There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.” Somerset Maugham
“Being a writer in Hollywood is like going into Hitler's Eagle's Nest with a great idea for a Bar Mitzvah.” David Mamet
“For those who can do it and who keep their nerve, writing for a living still beats most real, grown-up jobs hands down.” Terence Blacker
“I don't believe in children's books. I think after you've read Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Huckleberry Finn, you're ready for anything.” John Mortimer
“First a mistress you dally and play with, then she becomes your master and finally your tyrant.” Winston Churchill on writing a book
“A good style should show no sign of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.” Somerset Maugham
“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.” William Faulkner
“I'm a writer – if I stop writing, I'm nothing.” Wilbur Smith
“It is with books as with men - a very small number play a great part; the rest are lost in the multitude.” Voltaire
“There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a type-writer and open a vein.” Red Smith
“Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.” A E Housman
'In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read... It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.' S A Hayakawa
“It would be no loss to the world if most of the writers now writing had been strangled at birth.” Rebecca West
'When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God’s business.’ Flannery O’Connor
“When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing... A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of magic.” Susanna Clarke
“The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.” Thomas Carlyle
“Far better to write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.” Katherine Mansfield
“The most crucial thing is to learn the craft: how to string sentences together, how to make your dialogue sound like real people, how to properly pace a story, how to develop interesting characters.” Stephen Coonts
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” Italo Calvino
“The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.” Nietzsche
“Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient and sterile.” Sinclair Lewis
“Every time I read a Jane Austen novel, I feel like a bartender at the gates of heaven.” Mark Twain
“Inspiration is the act of drawing up a chair to the writing desk.” Anon
“The sole end of literature should be to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.” Samuel Johnson
“Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, the make his life full, significant and interesting.” Aldous Huxley
“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.” Robert Frost '
“A book is so much a part of oneself that in delivering it to the public one feels as if one were pushing one’s own child out into the traffic.” Quentin Bell
“The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman.” Roald Dahl
“The good thing about writing fiction is that you can get back at people.” John Grisham
“Writing a first novel takes so much effort, with such little promise of result or reward, that it must necessarily be a labor of love bordering on madness.” Steven Saylor
“Nothing gives an author so much pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by other learned authors.” Benjamin Franklin
"You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads…. may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world." Ray Bradbury
“Let the power of words light the candles of our souls setting the world on fire, inspiring greatness; for all things good can one day be great, if only you believe.” Lori R Taylor
