A Writing Quotes

#1. Sometimes writing is like talking to a stranger who's exactly like yourself in every possible way, only to realize that this stranger is as boring as shit.

Chuck Klosterman

#2. I'm going to write about them as I took them -- with a smile.

Jack Black

#3. All you need is coffee, some cigarettes, and a Twitter account and your writing career begins! How far you go is determined by the followers you call friends.

Stanley Victor Paskavich

#4. Mary Daheim writes with wit, wisdom, and a big heart. I love her books.

Carolyn Hart

#5. I had hoped to be a poet, and for a long time I tried to write poetry. My first published pieces were poems.

Norman Lock

#6. Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce.

John Gardner

#7. Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

Gore Vidal

#8. Anyone who has a choice and doesn't choose to write is a fool. The work is hard, the perks are few, the pay is terrible, and the product, when it's finally finished, is pure joy.

Mary Lee Settle

#9. You write so beautifully
the inside of your mind must be a terrible place

Unknown

#10. When I sit down in front of a Windows machine, I can't write; when I sit down in front of my Mac, I can write. So I only use Macs.

Michael Crichton

#11. Ms. Scarlett always delivers hot, sexy alphas and this isn't any different. Holy smokes, is this ever HOT! Love her writing and the way she spins a story but adds the HOT factor. Her alphas are phenomenal! - JC

Scarlett Avery

#12. Through lack of education, we're not teaching kids to read and write. So there is the danger that you raise up a generation of morons.

Ray Bradbury

#13. Writing is a struggle against silence.

Carlos Fuentes

#14. (The new boyfriend) knows I write every day for hours but has no idea that all I'm writing about is me. It seems wiser to let him think I'm an aspiring novelist instead of just an alcoholic with a year of sobriety who spends eight hours a day writing about the other 16.

Augusten Burroughs

#15. A pen transmits the voice of the soul.

Fennel Hudson

#16. Emily wondered whether Artie would be so carefree if he knew The Book Club was performing grand theft imagination.

S.A. Tawks

#17. After the Beatles and Dylan, there's this assumption that you are a singer-songwriter, or that if someone else is writing your rhymes, you're a fake rapper.

Alan Light

#18. Alan Alda and his wife Arlene are two of the most life-affirming people I've ever met. He espoused equal rights for women while producing, writing, acting in and directing 'M*A*S*H'; he used to commute between the set and home because he didn't want to disrupt his kids' schooling.

Sanjeev Bhaskar

#19. The public has no idea that writing is a disease, and that the writer who publishes is like a beggar who exhibits his sores.

Michael Kruger

#20. Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that.

Jane Yolen

#21. I guess that in a lot of ways, my writing is more of a character to me than something that I feel personally attached to.

Angel Olsen

#22. Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind.

Sara Sheridan

#23. If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

Louis L'Amour

#24. He began to view writing as a petty ambition, a frivolous and indulgent whim, creativity itself as the pathology of the very young or very stupid.

Galt Niederhoffer

#25. I began to write in the first place because I expected everything to change, and I wanted to have things in writing the way they had been. Just a little things, of course. A little of my little.

William, Saroyan

#26. I like to have a title before I start writing.

Sue Monk Kidd

#27. Writing is a product of silence.

Carrie Latet

#28. If you want to give the devil a message, write it on the bottom of your shoes.

Andrew Wommack

#29. When you banish me, you who are maryadapurushottham will be writing a law which will render innocent women of coming generations homeless and destitute.

Gita V. Reddy

#30. Yoga introduced me to a style of meditation. The only meditation I would have done before would be in the writing of songs.

Sting

#31. I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#32. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.

Stephen King

#33. There always had to be a survivor. Maybe this simply spoke to the optimism of the men writing those screenplays; even with an uncomfortable sci fi plot they had to subconsciously comfort themselves by thinking that at least a hundred people would survive.
Someone has to survive

Chris Dietzel

#34. I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them.

Tess Gerritsen

#35. I think music, like writing, can be a mirror. Can turn back onto the listener, the viewer, the reader, an experience that they know but they don't know.

Claudia Rankine

#36. You can curse the darkness, or you can dispel it.

A.D. Posey

#37. The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#38. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.

Carl Sagan

#39. But [Patrick's] character is partly based on a boy named Mark who lived across the street from me when I was growing up ... I liked hanging out with him and was sad when he moved away after only a year in the neighborhood. I guess writing about Patrick is a way for me to spend more time with Mark.

Linda Sue Park

#40. I'm also always thinking about the score as a recording, as opposed to a performance that can be recreated in a live environment. Some of what I write could of course be played in a concert hall, but for the needs of a film I don't consider that.

Geoff Zanelli

#41. Read. Read as if your life depended on it because your life as a novelist does.

Louise Doughty

#42. When I'm assembling a book I concentrate as though I were writing a poem. A truly imagined arrangement will indicate gaps and generate new poems. I re-read the new poems in my folder in the hope that this might happen.

Michael Longley

#43. When I was very young in London, I had a bank account, which didn't have a great deal in it. I should think at least every three months the bank manager would call me up and threaten to strangle me because I had no money, and I was writing checks.

Peter Mayle

#44. Good blurbs are short, sweet, and limited to six. They answer the question Why should I buy this book?

Guy Kawasaki

#45. I tend to like to write a song and then think about it for a while. I record a demo of it and then put it away and wait until I've gotten more thoughts on it or get sure exactly how to approach it.

Christopher Owens

#46. All writers start out mimicking other writers. I've never relinquished that. I have a good ear for speech and writing patterns.

Jesse Kellerman

#47. Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably something that doesn't have a lot of thematic or political baggage - a little crumb that is interesting.

George Saunders

#48. I think you become a writer when you stop writing for yourself or your teachers and start thinking about readers.

Avi

#49. It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.

Gerald Brenan

#50. A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.

Baron De Montesquieu

#51. Writing a novel that works is an extremely difficult thing to do. It requires a level of skill and dedication that always surprises me.

Bret Easton Ellis

#52. My favorite way of working is if somebody gives me a piece of music, because I'm quite limited as a player, so it's my favorite thing if somebody gives me a piece of music, and then I can write lyrics and melodies.

Sinead O'Connor

#53. Writing is a sickness only cured by writing.

Niall Williams

#54. I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one.

George Sand

#55. It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#56. I started to write a series of fantasy novels when I was eleven. I have never taken anything artistic as seriously; since then, writing has felt like an attempt to get back there, to my bedroom, my maps, those races and languages and runes.

Ken Baumann

#57. There are so many ready to write (poor fools!) for the honor and glory of the thing, and there are so many ready to take advantage of this fact, and withhold from needy talent the moral right to a deserved remuneration.

Fanny Fern

#58. The primary thing I should do, apart from being a good husband, brother, son, and friend, is to be a citizen activist. But I'm afraid it takes away from the writing. Not that anything depends on whether I put an essay in 'The Nation' or not. But you want to participate.

Tony Kushner

#59. pencils racing across paper, a sound I like." Marisol

Eileen Granfors

#60. If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing Double Dahlias in his garden.

David W. Wolfe

#61. If you're writing a screenplay for a feature, you don't have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff.

David Benioff

#62. Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of self-knowledge. The unexamined life is not a risk for them.

Mark Slouka

#63. Writing is mostly a case of mood management. The emotion you have is not absolute, it is temporary. It may be useful, but it is not the truth. It is not you.

Anne Enright

#64. Accept nothing. Challenge everything.

A.D. Posey

#65. When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose.

Samuel Colbran

#66. I sometimes feel that my goal as a novelist would be to write a novel in which the language was so transparent that the reader would forget that language was the medium of understanding. Of course that's not possible, but it's some sort of idealized goal.

Paul Auster

#67. In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities ... it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.

G.K. Chesterton

#68. Bon Jovi is most definitely the key to how I am able to write so much in a day

C.S. Woolley

#69. Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.

Steve Martin

#70. For a young and presumptuous poet a disposition to write satires is one of the most dangerous he can encourage. It tempts him to personalities, which are not always forgiven after he has repented and become ashamed of them.

Robert Southey

#71. Writing a song doesn't heal things. Even if the song comes up with a solution, it's still only a theory. Going out and living my lyrics is a whole other deal. That takes courage.

Alanis Morissette

#72. I wrote a book. It sucked. I wrote nine more books. They sucked, too. Meanwhile, I read every single thing I could find on publishing and writing, went to conferences, joined professional organizations, hooked up with fellow writers in critique groups, and didn't give up. Then I wrote one more book.

Beth Revis

#73. I worked at magazines for over 10 years before I even thought of writing a book.

Dave Eggers

#74. I like pens. My writing is so amazing there's never a need to erase.

Todd Barry

#75. And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.

Bernard Cornwell

#76. People talk differently. You can say some things some places you can't say in other places. But me as a film maker, no words are ever going to be off limits in something I write. As long as people use the words, I'm going to report that.

Dax Shepard

#77. Does it matter that people and things
Have words,
Have names?
If not,
Why read any book?
A litany of useless letters
Detached from bone, muscle.
Or are words the only things that make the muscle, bone, memory, movement,
Person
Real?

Stasia Ward Kehoe

#78. A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.

Andre Maurois

#79. I honestly think that in order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?

Anne Lamott

#80. I still get enormous pleasure and a sense of fulfillment out of writing a book that I'm proud of. I see myself as a bit like a jewel-maker who can sit back and admire his work.

Wilbur Smith

#81. I've heard Stephen King say that when you write a novel you end up revealing everything about yourself.

Ernest Cline

#82. I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.

James A. Michener

#83. No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula ... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.

Lauren Mayberry

#84. Creativity is divine.

A.D. Posey

#85. TV's not the problem, and I'm tired of it being posed as this antithesis to creativity and productivity. If TV's getting in your way of writing a book, then you don't want to write a book bad enough.

Andrea Seigel

#86. I may have a general broad-based idea of what I want to write about when I sit down to write a book, but I don't have any idea of what it's going to say. I would call my experience of creativity 'inspired by God' to produce certain pieces of information that might be useful to others.

Neale Donald Walsch

#87. There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.

James Taylor

#88. I've been writing a lot of country music again. I've written some bluegrass material. I'm having a good time doing that.

Dan Fogelberg

#89. Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.

Dean Wesley Smith

#90. It's often hilarious to me that I'm writing about Tonga or some tropical place and there's a blizzard outside and the cows are on their backs with their hooves in the air.

Tim Cahill

#91. Writing a song is actually quite easy. Writing a good one is very, very difficult.

Joe Elliott

#92. I've never had any interest at all in being a journalist or writing some sort of historically accurate autobiography.

James Frey

#93. The nerds are my favourite sort of boys - any guy with a passion - whether it be physics or film or writing or poetry even, I think it's super sweet and it's very attractive for a female.

Teresa Palmer

#94. I like writing for movies. It's nice to be alone working on fiction in your room, and then it's nice to be in a room with a bunch of people working on a movie.

Daniel Handler

#95. I talked to members of my family, and did some personal research that didn't really have anything to do with the time and place I was writing about, but that gave me a feeling of the experience of being black in a time and place where it was very difficult to be black.

Octavia Butler

#96. There are two kinds of typical days. There's the typical day when I'm writing a novel, and there's the typical day when I'm not.

Paul Auster

#97. There is a heavy price to pay for writing a bad book.

Tony Burgess

#98. I am always urging my students to honor their writing practice, to set up a schedule.

Tayari Jones

#99. There are times when I myself no longer know whether I said and did the things I report or whether I dreamed them up. Anyway, I always dream true. If I lie a bit now and then it is mainly in the interest of truth.

Henry Miller

#100. People think I'm selling feminism in my books, but what I'm really doing is writing advertising copy for expensive private colleges that most women can't afford anyway. Oh, and try to find a job with a major in English literature. No luck? Joke's on you, sucker!

Mary Gordon