Best Writing Quotes

#1. The best advice on writing I've ever received was from William Zinsser: 'Be grateful for every word you can cut.'

Christopher Buckley

#2. I like to write about people who are real and likeable. I like to write about people who tell their stories in that close and intimate voice we use with best friends. I love the closeness and honesty and vulnerability that come from characters who can talk that way.

Katherine Center

#3. Only when one is connected to one's inner core is one connected to others. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be re-found through solitude.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

#4. So if you are writing a story where love is the meaning, where love is the highest and best of all, where love is the point, then you have to allow each person a choice.

John Eldredge

#5. I have chosen to parody the writing styles of Carlos Castaneda, James Redfield, Richard Bach, Lynn Andrews, and several other best-selling new age authors.

Frederick Lenz

#6. The best way to be original is to not copy anyone.

Sebastyne Young

#7. Read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.

P.D. James

#8. When you teach, it's sometimes necessary to consciously not write for a month or two - and then pick a time in the future to sink back in. It makes you less frustrated and more in control. I do best when I give myself breaks and come back hungry.

Tom Barbash

#9. Good writing is difficult no matter what the reader's age-and children deserve the best.

Aaron Shepard

#10. We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show.

Annie Dillard

#11. I love writing - it's the best. But I really hate collaboration.

Norm MacDonald

#12. At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it.

Annie Dillard

#13. The research. It is always the best part of writing. And, of course, it is the great excuse to travel.

Michael Scott

#14. Writing, for me, is the best occupation I can think of, and there is nothing in the world I would rather do.

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

#15. The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.

Criss Jami

#16. If you write in the paper 'Lee stinks,' that's not going to affect me. I'll just laugh. And if you write 'Derrek Lee is the best player in the league,' that won't affect me either. I'll laugh.

Derrek Lee

#17. The best novels capture the times in which the writer lives, which accounts for the current, if contrasting taste for lost utopias and dystopian nightmares peopled by vampires and wolves.

Chloe Thurlow

#18. He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.

Oscar Wilde

#19. Some of my affectionate envious friends say, "You write too much." Maybe, I answer. But as long as the best of your little is worse than the worst of my much, I will keep on doing so.

Juan Ramon Jimenez

#20. "Best in the world," "lowest price in existence, " etc are at best claiming the expected. But superlative of that sort are usually damaging. They suggestion looseness of expression, a tendency to exaggerate, a careless truth. They lead readers to discount all the statements that you make

Claude C. Hopkins

#21. The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.

Chris Stapleton

#22. Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe.

Paul Di Filippo

#23. You know, I've always wrote my best stuff when it takes me hardly any time at all. Actually I wrote ... this is actually a really funny story ... 'Ghost Of Vincent Price', I've been wanting to write a song about Vincent Price coz he's one of my favorite characters of all time.

Wednesday 13

#24. I write best when "I" am not writing.

Girish Kohli

#25. Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance.

Julia Glass

#26. I think best with a pencil in my hand.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

#27. For me, writing post-apocalyptic novels isn't so much about exploding helicopters and fifty-megaton doomsday bombs as it is about the pleasure of dealing with the best of everything that makes us human: cleverness, grit, loyalty, and self-sacrifice.

Jeff Carlson

#28. The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.

Bernard DeVoto

#29. The best thing about being a writer is that 'work' is always something you love, plus usually accompanied by tea, coffee and cakes of some sort.

Jamie L. Harding

#30. Then Snowball (for it was Snowball who was best at writing) took a brush between the two knuckles of his trotter, painted out MANOR FARM from the top bar of the gate and in its place painted ANIMAL FARM. This was to be the name of the farm from now onwards.

George Orwell

#31. Search your own life for the story only you can tell. The best thing about writing from life is that you can be sure of using original material. And no research is needed beyond the time you spend looking deep inside your own heart.

Elizabeth Held Forsyth

#32. I've never been high. Writing is my drug of choice. You don't ever have to come down from that kind of high, I tell ya. And, best part is, it's free.

Christy Hall

#33. For those whose ganglia were formed pre-TV, the mimetic deployment of pop-culture icons seems at best an annoying tic and at worst a dangerous vapidity that compromises fiction's seriousness by dating it out of the Platonic Always, where it ought to reside.

Jonathan Lethem

#34. Being a good author is more important than being a best-selling one.

Tarang Sinha

#35. Sometimes, I make 50 songs and pick out the best 10. I've been in the studio all day, all night, making the beat, writing the raps. You never know what's gonna be a hit.

Juicy J

#36. The best advice I can give to any aspiring author is to write every single day. Work at the craft of writing. Take it seriously.

Andrea Davis Pinkney

#37. I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and put words together.

Robert Harris

#38. I don't like to make a distinction between the writer and the painter , finally , because I do both things anyway . Everybody's dreaming and trying to put down their dreams in the way that their hand knows best . I feel as much a unity , as much comradeship , with painters as I do writers .

Clive Barker

#39. The good thing about being undiscovered is that every time you begin a new writing project it feels like this work will be the best one you have done, this one will be better than the last, a higher standard of writing, and that's the way it should be.

Robert Black

#40. Ask yourself, what makes my book so different? So interesting? Don't write to be a best seller. Write for and from your heart, not your wallet. Write something you want to be remembered by.

Leon Nacson

#41. People do support themselves as artists and writers, so there's no need to be all doom and gloom about it. You just have to push forward. You have to follow your vision and hope for the best. You have to write for love.

Cheryl Strayed

#42. Writing studio movies is the best job in the world ... it's awesome.

Thomas Lennon

#43. In recent years, I've been writing because I'm fortunate enough to work in the world of food television, to travel and taste and learn about cooking from the best chefs in the business.

Ted Allen

#44. I really wasn't too interested in writing "Father Knows Best" and "Ozzie And Harriet." I thought they were pleasant enough, but it wasn't really what I wanted to do.

Garry Marshall

#45. It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise

Barbara Kingsolver

#46. When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up an honest trade like shoe repair, cattle stealing, or screwworm management.

Edward Abbey

#47. I tried to stick with what I knew best, which is writing rock n' roll songs and melodies. I am as passionate as I was when I was 20.

Gary Cherone

#48. Writing is not just my Hobby . Pen is mouthpiece of my feelings,I have no another one But paper is my best friend. and My Best Friend always Listen so patiently whatever,whenever i speak

Mohammed Zaki Ansari

#49. Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is beyond our reach. The best time to write is now, in the present.

M. Kirin

#50. All the best songs are, I think, the easiest write because they just come out.

Benji Madden

#51. I think the book you always like best is the one you're about to write.

Margaret Atwood

#52. I just want to touch something deep in the heart of humanity. I don't know if that's in movies, producing films, or writing a book, but I'm concerned about our spiritual well-being as a human race. I want to impact people in a way that makes us all reach for our best.

Nicole Ari Parker

#53. Your best authorial self is always one about to ruin the story.

Chuck Wendig

#54. Of the small number of things which I have liked and done well, drinking is by far the thing I have done best. Although I have read a lot, I have drunk more. I have written much less than most people who write; but I have drunk more than the majority of the people who drink.

Guy Debord

#55. The best tip for writing is just to write; to sit down and write, to begin doing it and not to be scared by the blank page.

David Almond

#56. Writing it was the best part, but clicking the enter button was the most difficult.

Ali Shams

#57. The best writing has no lace on its sleeves.

Walt Whitman

#58. I feel like the songs that I write are best when they are performed by an ensemble, rather than by one solo instrument.

Thalia Zedek

#59. The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating demands of mediocrity must be satisfied. Amuse the people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh, shadows of truth which they can hold as truths.

Aleksandar Hemon

#60. Writing your own jokes, you just kind of keep working on something until you think it might work, and then you try it out and hope for the best.

Aziz Ansari

#61. My background is really being a writer's actor - that seems to be the way I work best, bringing out the best of writing. There's a whole range of acting skills, and some people can be astonishing with very poor material. That's not me; my skill is essentially unlocking the writing.

Lindsay Duncan

#62. The best writing really does come from the deepest, most private part of you.

Michael Arndt

#63. I get intrigued by a puzzle, and writing a book is the best way to solve it.

Anthony Storr

#64. This is the best time to be an author.

Geraldine Solon

#65. Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed the whole world, and an entire sprawling industry, that writing monsters and demons and end-of-the-world is not hack-work, it can challenge the best. Joss Whedon raised the bar for every writer - not just genre/niche writers, but every single one of us.

Russell T. Davies

#66. I owe what is best in my own development to the impression made by Kant's works, the sacred writings of the Hindus, and Plato.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#67. Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

Jonathan Franzen

#68. I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable.

Truman Capote

#69. People say I'm not good at writing about men. My dad left when I was 16. Give me a break. I'm doing the best I can.

Jennifer Weiner

#70. Though old the thought and oft exprest, Tis his at last who says it best.

James Russell Lowell

#71. I am the entertainer, I've come to do my show You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life It was a beautiful song but it ran too long If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05.

Billy Joel

#72. The best thing about Art is that the people who create it live forever.

Jonathan Heatt

#73. I think my one of my strengths in standup is my ability to adlib. I do all my best writing on stage. I can sit down and write jokes, but I'd rather go on stage with a premise or an idea and let the jokes come that way. My creative juices are never flowing any better than when I'm onstage.

Henry Cho

#74. It's the best thing to happen to a sport, that you have a superstar. In football there is always something to write about the Beckhams, same as people want to write about Rooney or Hooney or whatever his bloody name is.

Bernie Ecclestone

#75. The best is oftentimes the enemy of the good; and many a good book has remained unwritten ... because there floated before the mind's eye the ideal of a better or a best.

Richard Chenevix Trench

#76. I don't come up with ideas, they come to me. I write them down and try to convey what's wrong with me to the audience as best I can.

Iliza Shlesinger

#77. It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things ...

Aimee Bender

#78. My guitar is like my best friend. My guitar can get me through anything. If I can sit down and write an amazing song with my guitar about what's going on in life, then that's the greatest therapy for me.

Miley Cyrus

#79. You learn to do your best writing on story rather than off story. Very often at the beginning of their careers, writers including me do their best dialogue writing off story - the best lines, the best observations - but they haven't got enough to do with the plot to stay in.

Victor Levin

#80. When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.

Michael Morpurgo

#81. I wrote for many years without showing my writing to anyone, because I was constantly comparing it to what I was reading. You have to compare yourself to the best and feel totally inadequate.

Pankaj Mishra

#82. In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.

Gore Vidal

#83. I'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's an odd feeling though, writing aginst the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall.

Virginia Woolf

#84. If I'm going to be a pessimist, then I should just stop writing for young people because that's too heavy a burden to put on young readers. But also, I get to meet with people who have waded through horrible things, and they get up every morning, and they try to do their best.

Deborah Ellis

#85. Well, Bud," he said, looking at me, "I'll be damned if you don't go to a lot of trouble to have your fun. Kidnapping, then fighting. What do you do on your holidays? Burn houses?

William Faulkner

#86. For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.

Langston Hughes

#87. Of course you want to be good and you want to do the best you can, but I am inspired by great writing. If there's something about the script, that's what I go for, although I know that that doesn't always translate because sometimes it's about the vision of the director.

Sally Hawkins

#88. There are three good things in this world. One is to read poetry, another is to write poetry, and the best of all is to live poetry.

Rupert Brooke

#89. I don't really think in terms of making something that is going to be bought everywhere, because I don't read those things. My writing is a process in which I try my best to make good sentences and a sequence of events that is compelling and believable.

Tom Drury

#90. I can assure you, as anyone who has ever met a muse knows, the best way to get a muse to hang around is to show you could be having fun without her.

Z.A. Maxfield

#91. The late Mavis Gallant told the Paris Review that writing is like "a love affair: the beginning is the best part. I write every day. It is not a burden. It is the way I live.

Mavis Gallant

#92. Perhaps the best way to write is to do so as if one were already dead, afraid of no one's reactions, answerable to no one's views.

Nadine Gordimer

#93. Much of my writing has taken the form of a pilgrimage: to sacred places that represent the best of America, to musicians and other artists who represent the best of their art.

William Zinsser

#94. The best work that I am able to do is when I am willing to write about questions I haven't quite figured out, or things I'm really wrestling with, things that keep me up at night.

Stephen Karam

#95. I should have been deliriously happy. I had my dream come true. I'm a best-selling author. So why is everything in my life, including my writing, going bad?

Tawni O'Dell

#96. Elizabeth Searle writes with intelligence, passion and wit. She's one of the best young writers around.

Robert Boswell

#97. The place I write best is at the Angell Hall computer center on the University of Michigan campus, where I went to school. I still go over there and rock it through the night.

Davy Rothbart

#98. I read every screenplay that was being sent to the other directors. None were being sent to me, but I was reading what others were choosing and what the best writers were writing.

Rupert Sanders

#99. This is what works for me: I practise crop rotation with my creative endeavours. I've found that when the nitrogen runs out in the soil in one field, it's best to leave it fallow for a while and cultivate another.

Andrew Macrae

#100. Next to motherhood, I personally believe that being an author is the best job in the world.

Geraldine Solon