Writing Quotes

Below is my ever-growing collection of Writing Quotes. For some odd reason, I prefer the “Writing is hell” side of things when choosing quotes. Read (or write) into that what you may…

A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul. — Aldous Huxley

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. — Thomas Mann

After being turned down by numerous publishers, he had decided to write for posterity. — George Ade

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it. — Oscar Wilde

Anyone who believes you can’t change history has never tried to write his memoirs. — David Ben Guiron

Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs. — Jack Lynch

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. — Lord Byron

By writing much, one learns to write well. — Robert Southey

Easy reading is damned hard writing. — Anonymous

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. — Flannery O’Connor

Fiction is the truth inside the lie. — Stephen King

Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing — Melinda Haynes

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. — Winston Churchill

I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind. — Patrick Dennis

I am a man, and alive…. For this reason I am a novelist. And being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog. — D.H. Lawrence, Preface to Shestov, All Things Are Possible, 1938

I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work. — Pearl S. Buck

I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly — Edgar Rice Burroughs

I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter. — Blaise Pascal

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper — Steve Martin

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

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water. — Ernest Hemingway

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. — Isaac Asimov

If you’re a freelance writer and aren’t used to being ignored, neglected, and generally given short shrift, you must not have been in the business very long. — Poppy Z. Brite

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. — Virginia Woolf

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

It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way. — Ernest Hemingway

Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write. — James T. Farrell

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft — H.G. Wells

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Providing a voice for those who may be in a similar situation, who might need that voice is so important. They might not be able to find that in themselves, to get themselves out of that situation and make something positive out of it. Whenever I’m writing a song that’s what I’m doing - making a negative a positive and healing myself in the process. — Christina Aguilera, Elle UK March 2004

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. — T.S. Eliot

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. — Tom Clancy

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. — Albert Camus

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are — W. Somerset Maughan

There is no great writing, only great rewriting — Justice Brandeis

We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little. — Anne Lamott

Write without pay until someone offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this as a sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for — Mark Twain

Writers will happen in the best of families. — Rita Mae Brown

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination — Louise Brooks

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. — Gene Fowler

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. — Robert A. Heinlein

Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter. — Jessamyn West

Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted. — Jules Renard

Writing is the flip side of sex – it’s good only when it’s over. — Hunter S. Thompson

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself. — Terry Pratchett

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else. — Gloria Steinem

Writing’s much the same at any age - sticking one’s head out of the trench to be shot at, the better to catch some butterfly. — Fay Wheldon

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