Top 100 If You Want To Write Quotes
#1. If you want to write anything that works, you have to go with the grain of your talent, not against it. If your talent is inert and sullen in the face of business or politics ... but takes fire at the thought of ghosts and vampires and witches and demons then feed the flames, feed the flames.
Philip Pullman
#2. I would say if you want to write, write what you care about. I think that's the most important thing. I think if you write what you care about, you stand a better chance of having the reader care about your story.
Jerry Spinelli
#3. There is no substitute for practical experience, and if you want to write about people you ought to put down that comic book and go out and meet some of them rather than studying the way that Stan Lee or Chris Claremont depict people.
Alan Moore
#4. If you want to write a novel about our world now, you'd better write science fiction, or you will be doing some kind of inadvertent nostalgia piece; you will lack depth, miss the point, and remain confused.
Kim Stanley Robinson
#5. If you want to write, then write; if you don't want to write, then don't write. I fell into the former category, and I just made the decision that I'd keep on because I liked it and might someday do something decent.
Ben Fountain
#6. Finally, if you want to write, you have to just shut up, pick up a pen, and do it. I'm sorry there are no true excuses. This is our life. Step forward. Maybe it's only for ten minutes. That's okay. To write feels better than all the excuses.
Natalie Goldberg
#7. And no, I don't mind if you want to write me again. Even if you do it in one of those kitten-hanging-from-a-tree cards. ~Lincoln
Katie McGarry
#8. If you want to write for T.V. and movies, you will be subjected to kind and unkind criticism. You had better get used to it and develop a shell.
Anne Beatts
#9. If you want to write something that will change the world, write the things that won't stay unwritten.
Kate Bartolotta
#10. Never let your dreams die! If you want to write then write. Never be put off by people who think they know better than you do.
Have confidence to keep on going!
Millie Aveyard
#11. If you want to write the next great novel, but you think, No, this won't work because no one will buy it or it won't be any good, then you talk yourself out of taking a risk.
John Tesh
#12. [Ernest ]Hemingway always said, "Write about what you know." I think you can do that, and if you want to write about what you don't know, you can. It just takes a lot more work.
William T. Vollmann
#13. If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say.
Ann Patchett
#14. Whatever you have a passion for, then you must do. If you want to write, write about something you know about.
Jackie Collins
#15. I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.
John Dalton
#16. you want to write well, write prolifically. If you want to write prolifically, write habitually. If you want to write habitually, learn how to have fun with the process. And if you want to learn how to have fun with the process, pay attention to what's working for you and what isn't.
Anonymous
#18. Besides, if you want to write something perfect, write a haiku. Anything longer is bound to have a few passages that don't work as well as they might.
Philip Pullman
#19. If you want to write what the world is about, you have to write details ... real life is in the dishes. Real life is pushing strollers up the street, folding T-shirts, the alarm clock going off early and you dropping into bed exhausted every night. That's real life.
Anna Quindlen
#20. If you want to write about life, you have to write about death.
Marty Rubin
#21. There is no excuse. If you want to write, write.This is your life, you are responsible for it.You will not live forever.Don't wait. Make the time now.
Natalie Goldberg
#22. It's not easy. I got lots of rejections when I first started out. If you want to write, you have to believe in yourself and not give up. You have to do your best to practice and get better.
Rick Riordan
#23. If you want to write about people, you can make it up. But if you spend time talking to someone and examining what it is you want to write about, you discover a level of detail that you wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
Dave Eggers
#24. If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for your friends, get a blog. If you want to write for others ... become an author.
James Patterson
#25. If you want to write an angry e-mail, write it but don't send it. It's based on my experience that whenever I have acted out in some manner, I have always regretted it.
Tim Gunn
#26. If you want to write a novel, be relentlessly relentless. Get ready for re-writes and rejections. But when you finally hold that book in your hand, well...get ready to rejoice!
Brigitte Quinn
#27. If you want to write poetry, you must have poems that deeply move you. Poems you can't live without. I think of a poem as the blood in a blood transfusion, given from the heart of the poet to the heart of the reader. Seek after poems that live inside you, poems that move through your veins.
Ralph Fletcher
#28. No one wants one language. There are applications when it's appropriate to write something in C rather than in Java. If you want to write something where performance is much more important than extensibility, then you might want to choose C rather than Java.
Brian Behlendorf
#29. If you want to write something of length, however modern and radical, you must live the life of an elderly gentleman of the 1950s.
Arthur Smith
#30. What everybody is well advised to do is to not write about your own life, this is if you want to write fast. You will be writing about your own life anyway but you won't know it.
Kurt Vonnegut
#31. If you want to write a book that's very successful and famous, then it's hard. If you just want to get published, all you have to do is convince an editor that your idea will make them money.
Kate Cary
#32. If you want to write ... keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair.
Madeleine L'Engle
#33. If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it.
Robert B. Parker
#34. If you ever read one of my books I hope you'll think it looks so easy. In fact, I wrote those chapters 20 times over, and over, and over, and that if you want to write at a good level, you'll have to do that too.
Peter Carey
#35. If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.
Ann Patchett
#36. If you want to write, write. It's as simple as that.
K.D. Green
#37. If you want to write a negative review, don't tickle me gently with your aesthetic displeasure about my work. Unleash the goddamn Kraken.
[on Twitter, July 17, 2012]
Scott Lynch
#38. I studied the short story as part of my creative writing course at university but then set off as a novelist. Generally, there is a sense that even if you want to write short stories, you need to do a novel first.
Sarah Hall
#39. If you want to write believable fiction, you will have to cross over the line of your self-restraint and revel in the words and ideas that you would never express in your everyday life.
Walter Mosley
#40. If you want to write, you write. The only way to learn to write is by writing.
Stephen King
#41. I've always written for actors, and if you want to write for good actors, you have to write parts that are surprising, that are human, and that allow them to go to a wide range of places.
Peter Hedges
#42. I don't recommend being a bachelor, but it helps if you want to write.
Nelson Algren
#43. If you want to write, find your splinter. Find the thing that pierces you and won't let you go.
Megan McDonald
#44. If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass.
Lawrence Block
#45. If you want to write, you write. Talent is simply not enough.
Jane Yolen
#46. Writers are there to write, not experience things. If you want to experience things, become a pirate or a Bookhunter. If you want to write, write. If you can't find the makings of a story inside yourself, you won't find them anywhere.
Walter Moers
#47. Being a journalist is good if you want to write books: it teaches you to get beyond the blank screen. My books have been described as froth, but there's scope to be witty and ironic about everything in life.
Sophie Kinsella
#48. If you want to write serious books, you must be ready to break the forms.
Charles J. Shields
#50. There's a bit of hope that a song can be about anything. If you want to write a song about anything, you can, and you don't have to put it through the process of having it be trendy or cool or generic pop or these types.
M.I.A.
#51. If you want to write a novel, it's the Divine mind wanting to express.
Julia Cameron
#52. You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.
Haruki Murakami
#53. If you want to write, you have to be willing to be disturbed.
Kate Green
#54. If you want to write books to get famous, the books will suck.Write books to tell the story you want to tell and for no other reason.
Lori Lesko
#55. I tell beginning readers to read a lot and write a lot. If you want to write a book, find a subject that's really worth the time and effort you'll put in.
Tracy Kidder
#56. If you want to write, you've got to shut yourself up in a room and write.
Larry Brown
#57. If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you.
Madeleine L'Engle
#58. Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft. If you want to write, practice writing.
Ann Patchett
#59. If you want to give the devil a message, write it on the bottom of your shoes.
Andrew Wommack
#60. 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
#61. You can write and visualize goals all you want, but if you do not take action, your goals will never become a reality. To obtain a goal you have never before achieved will require tasks you have never before done.
Cameron C. Taylor
#62. If you ever want to know why I'm not on a record label, look at 'The X Factor!' Honestly, of all the people that strive to break barriers in music and do good things and write great lyrics, not one of them would ever pass the first round on any of these competitions.
John Lydon
#63. Don't fall into the trap of having to have everything perfect to write or wait until the mood strikes you. If you want it as a job, treat it like a job, and just as you don't go to work only when you feel like it, you have to condition yourself to sit and write even when the ideas don't flow.
Kim Harrison
#64. Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records.
Roger Waters
#65. If your life is a blank page, that only means you have room to write your story. You have the power to tell that story the way you want to.
Thea Harrison
#66. All the definitions people want to put on you in terms of what kind of writer you are come with hidden meanings. If you're writing science fiction, you're writing rocket ships. If you write dystopian fiction, it's inequity where The Man must be fought.
Paolo Bacigalupi
#67. If you want to know what you look like, look into a mirror. If you want to know how you think, you should write
Dennis Prager
#68. I don't write books for people to be friends with the characters. If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party.
Zoe Heller
#69. I always figured it was best if I write my songs, take them to my publisher and just lay back. There used to be so many things going on - getting to the artist, getting to the publishers - you know, politics. I just didn't want to get mixed up in all of that.
Otis Blackwell
#70. Writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.
Robert Galbraith
#71. I paraphrase Aristotle: If you want to be comical, write about people to whom the audience can feel superior; if you want to be tragical, write about at least one person to whom the audience is bound to feel inferior, and no fair having human problems solved by dumb luck or heavenly intervention.
Kurt Vonnegut
#72. Let's not talk about it any more, but if you still want anything please write to me about it, because I can say what I mean much better on paper.
Anne Frank
#73. By encouraging the critic in themselves (the hater) they have killed the artist (the lover).
Brenda Ueland
#74. If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.
Martin Luther
#75. You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.
Michael Lewis
#76. I do sit down every day and make myself write. I want 2,000 words every day or 3 single-space pages a day. I think if you are on a deadline, you have to be disciplined. If you turn things in late, you will find yourself without a contract.
Michelle Moran
#77. I learned early on that if you don't want your memos to get you in trouble someday, just don't write any.
Dick Cheney
#78. If you want to be a poet, you can just write it on a napkin, and it's the length of the napkin, I guess. But usually you decide you'll rhyme it, or you'll have a formula. In radio, that's something called, 'Close your eyes and listen.'
Robert Krulwich
#79. Now, I know some women have issues with their bodies. Maybe you've got a little extra junk in the trunk? Get over it. Doesn't matter. Naked kicks Modest's ass every single time. Men are visual. We wouldn't be fucking you if we didn't want to look at you. You can write that down if you like.
Emma Chase
#80. You should not do an autobiography if you want to tell the truth. There are a lot of things I know about people. If I can't say something good about a person, I don't want to say anything. And since I don't want to say anything bad, I won't write a book.
Abraham A. Ribicoff
#81. One thing that worried me was how writers get categorized and so they end up having to write the same kind of book again and again. That is fine if it is what you want to do, but I would rather be locked in the trunk of my car with a weasel than write the same book every three years until I die.
Justin Cronin
#82. I know, if I am playing well, I can be as good as anyone, and I want to show people who write you off and forget about you.
Alan Smith
#83. It's amazing, if you know what you want to say, how fast it is to write.
Evan Davis
#84. If you're in a country and you want to learn about it, it's a good idea to go and found out what they have to say for themselves; you might want to write a good story about it, when they're not looking.
Marion Davies
#85. If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want.
Frederik Pohl
#86. The dictator says "You are allowed to think as you want" but never write it down or talk about it. If you cross these borders we cannot guarantee your security
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#87. Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely necessary. What do you have to offer me I can't find otherwise except humiliation? Which I no longer need.
Margaret Atwood
#88. But if you want to be in a band and write music, then you should just be in a band and write music.
Adam Jones
#89. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill.
If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.
- Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
The Silkworm
J.K. Rowling
#90. If you want to do your version, go off and write it. You bring your knowledge to it, and you can use that to shape it and color it, but it's someone else's version of that character. You're not actually playing the real person.
Jared Harris
#91. Often kids in a computer lab learn about word-processing, but if they want to write an essay, they write it by hand. This is exactly the opposite of what you want them to learn. They're approaching the computer as just another abstract school subject.
Seymour Papert
#92. I don't actually talk about my books much, because I find if I talk about them I don't want to write them anymore. I write to find out what happens. You know how you read a book? That's what I'm doing except I'm just doing it a lot slower because it takes a lot longer to do.
Charles De Lint
#93. I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal, because if you lose it, then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal, but I always write everything down ... Anytime I travel, I try and fill up notepads.
Garrett Hedlund
#94. I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.
Alan Bennett
#95. If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you'll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they'll kick your ass every time.
Scott McCloud
#96. I don't want somebody who writes like me [in my writing staff]. Because I can write like me. I know what I'm capable of and what my limitations are. If you're going to build an orchestra, you don't want all tubas - you want a violin and you want a cello and you want a drum set.
Tom Fontana
#97. If you want to be a calligrapher, write, and write, and write.
Idries Shah
#98. If you're a songwriter, you want to write a song like "Oh Yeah" that radically shifts everything. You can definitely retire on that song. You want to have something you can put in your songbook that everybody can recognize, whether it's a good or bad thing.
Margaret Cho
#99. Ojiisan says if you want to understand a people, look at their language. The words write the history, not the other way around.
Leza Lowitz
#100. Come on guys, let's be serious. If you really want to do something, don't just 'like' this post. Write that you are ready, and we can try to start something" [Mustafa Nayyem quoted in Chrystia Freeland, "Euromaidan, Kiev: A Place Becomes A Movement"].
Catie Marron
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