Top 100 On Writing Quotes
#1. My philosophy has always been if I can learn just one thing from an article or book on writing, it's worth it.
Writer's Digest Books
#2. Stephen King's 'On Writing' is probably the most useful writing book I've ever read.
Jason Henderson
#3. I didn't originally intend on writing a book. I started writing during the day to feel like I was accomplishing something creative.
Rachel Dratch
#4. Why one goes on writing when one sees what writing can be - and what one's own writing is not. Aldous Huxley
Nicholas Murray
#5. I've devoted a lot of my time and effort during the past few years to developing my advertising copywriting business to the point of where I can support my family and don't have to depend on writing fiction for my income.
George Stephen
#6. I believed that if I was to call myself a writer, I should live on writing. If I could not live on it, even simply, I should destroy every scrap, every trace, every notebook and live some other way.
Mavis Gallant
#7. I really enjoyed hearing the likesand dislikesof my readers at book clubs as well as meeting new fans at the book signing at The Bookworm in Omaha " he said. "The book clubs have overwhelmingly asked me to hurry up on writing the sequel.
J. Alexander Greenwood
#8. Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing.
Elena Ferrante
#9. I've found you can go on writing in the dark, and that the act of writing itself, that mysterious, dangerous, intoxicating, absorbing, nourishing magician's trick, that act of creation is its own light.
Janette Turner Hospital
#10. My hand is very tired but I want to go on writing. I keep resting and thinking. All day I have been two people - the me imprisoned in yesterday and the me out here on the mound; and now there is a third me trying to get in - the me in what is going to happen next.
Dodie Smith
#11. I kept on writing and illustrating, for this is what I did well because I loved it.
Jean Craighead George
#12. Don't try to follow any trends, just concentrate on writing great songs and knowing your instrument. All the other stuff will fall into place.
Steven Adler
#13. I was hooked on writing. I mean, where else can you get paid for sticking your nose into somebody else's business?
Bette Greene
#14. I don't want to be famous per se, but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.
Amanda Hocking
#15. I'm not religious. I love what Clive James said the other day. James is a brilliant writer, but he keeps on writing poems on stuff. And he said, "God doesn't have a leg to stand on."
Tom Courtenay
#16. On Writing: A multitude of improbabilities can be forgiven as long as enough plausibility has been established.
Danielle Ackley-McPhail
#17. For me personally, I'm mostly focused on writing and acting right now.
Ben Savage
#18. Getting started on writing a book isn't as hard as it sounds. You don't need a plan and an outline. In fact, all you need are two things: time and one idea.
Natasha Lester
#19. I don't plan on writing biographies of great sports stars who are still playing ball. But I did write one on Jackie Robinson, who was playing ball in the 20th century.
David A. Adler
#20. I find that it is useless to worry about things I can't control and I can't control how many people come out tonight. All I can do is focus on writing the best songs I can write and performing the best I can perform.
Corey Smith
#21. A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.
Samuel McChord Crothers
#22. Plot might seem to be a matter of choice. It is not. The particular plot is something the novelist is driven to: it is what is left after the whittling-away of alternatives.' Elizabeth Bowen opened her Notes on Writing a Novel (1945, reprinted in Collected Impressions, Longmans, Green & Co.,
Elizabeth Bowen
#23. I never really focus on writing for other people, to be honest. Every song I've ever written was for me to sing. Maybe if I'm writing for a rapper, but I'd still write it as though it was for myself and then sometimes I'm actually asked to do the part.
Skylar Grey
#24. I make no claim to be an authority on writing or illustrating for children.
Hugh Lofting
#26. There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary ... because it hurts less to write than it does not to write.
Robert A. Heinlein
#27. If you really have talent, you know, you'll go on writing - whatever people say to you.
Christopher Isherwood
#28. A writer can't afford to just focus on writing and leave marketing aside in today's competitive market.
Amish Tripathi
#29. I am 82 years old. I imagine that I will keep on writing as long as anyone wants to keep reading.
Tony Hillerman
#30. If you write something and they all tell you it is bad - editors, critics, everybody - think it over and you may become convinced that they are right (though you are not to be ashamed or discouraged for a minute, but keep on writing).
Brenda Ueland
#31. Open this notebook every day and write down half a page at the very least. If you have nothing to write down, then at least, following Gogol's advice, write down that today there's nothing to write. Always write with attention and look on writing as a holiday.
Daniil Kharms
#32. So long as readers keep reading and my publishers keep publishing, I plan to keep on writing. I'd have to be an idiot to be burnt-out in this job.
Lee Child
#33. Too many people focus on writing what they think they should write, what should be in a song, what radio would want.
Kacey Musgraves
#34. [On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'"
(One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.)
David Halberstam
#35. My philosophy on writing books is that if you learn only one new thing, or even get a new take on something you already know, it's worth it.
James Scott Bell
#36. At some point, I had to make a decision: I could practice more and become a really great guitar player or I could work on writing better songs. There are only so many hours in the day, and I found writing songs more fulfilling than working on becoming this virtuoso guitar player.
James Iha
#37. Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.
Haruki Murakami
#38. It varies from song to song, although Buck Owens and I recently collaborated on writing a duet together and am looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to recording that track for the new studio album.
Dwight Yoakam
#39. I'm dependent on writing for a living, so really it's to my advantage to understand how the creative process works. One of the problems is, when you start to do that, in effect you're going to have to step off the edge of science and rationality.
Alan Moore
#40. There are many advices on writing. The best I know is stop reading them and start writing
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#41. Wind comes in, your candle tips over and flares up, and a loose tent-flap catches fire, and through the widening black-edged gap you can see the eyes of the howlers, red and shining in the light from your burning paper shelter, but you keep on writing anyway because what else can you do?
Margaret Atwood
#42. [On writing biography:] ... every human life is at once so complex and so simple, so perplexing and so clear, so superficial and so profound, that any attempt to present it as a unified, consistent whole, to enclose it within a rigid frame, inevitably tempts one to cheat or to falsify.
Iris Origo
#43. I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world
or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin. (On Writing.)
Ernest Hemingway,
#44. Value the quality of your articles over the number of articles you write. I know a lot of bloggers focus on writing as many articles as possible, but I've realized over the years that you cannot sacrifice quality if you wish to build a loyal following on your blog.
Jeet Banerjee
#45. I'm sure that people who have been tweeting funny things have ended up on writing staffs of a late night show.
Dane Cook
#46. I placed the highest priority on the sort of life that lets me focus on writing, not associating with all the people around me.
Haruki Murakami
#47. Since I didn't spend a great amount of time on writing the lyrics, some people would argue that they're too vague or simplistic, but I think it's kind of good. I wouldn't say they're all stream of consciousness, but they're not necessarily overwrought.
Jack Tatum
#48. Don't tear up the page and start over again when you write a bad line-try to write your way out of it. Make mistakes and plunge on. Writing is a means of discovery, always.
Garrison Keillor
#49. For me, the monologue was the favorite thing I had done in radio. It was based on writing, but in the end it was radio, it was standing up and leaning forward into the dark and talking, letting words come out of you.
Garrison Keillor
#50. Go on writing plays, my boy, One of these days one of these London producers will go into his office and say to his secretary, "Is there a play from Shaw this morning?" and when she says, "No," he will say, "Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish." And that's your chance, my boy.
George Bernard Shaw
#51. [On writing her first poem at age eight:] An ode to my dead mother and father, who were both alive and pretty pissed off.
Judith Viorst
#52. [On writing to Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple:] I told her I would play a Venetian blind, dirt on the floor, anything.
Whoopi Goldberg
#53. I really have very little aspirations about acting because I think that probably the best things have come and gone. I would like to focus on writing and directing. I love writing and directing even though writing can be incredibly painful and lonely. I get great satisfaction from doing it.
Sylvester Stallone
#54. Read everything you can on writing. Join online forums and critique groups, go to conferences, get feedback, and learn, learn, learn!
Chevy Stevens
#55. I think it's more about trying to just focus exclusively on writing music and making that a viable, sustainable lifestyle. It's difficult because it forces you to really get creative.
Alan Palomo
#56. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
Ray Bradbury
#57. On writing: I don't like doing this, but it feels so good when I stop.
Richard Ford
#58. I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.
Gwendolyn Brooks
#59. I don't write poetry or short stories. I don't like to write articles usually. I tend to really only want to be focused on writing novels. It's one of the real advantages I've had over the years. I've only been good at one thing. It helps to be limited.
Markus Zusak
#60. Publishing is a business, and I completely understand it. But when you don't have to depend on writing for your identity or your income, you can do whatever you want.
Hanya Yanagihara
#61. Then that had passed. It was 1923 and I wrote a book and discovered that my doom, fate, was to keep on writing books: not for any exterior or ulterior purpose: just writing the books for the sake of writing the books;
William Faulkner
#62. The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing.
Ken MacLeod
#63. Each night about this time he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing.
Anne Carson
#64. I guess the thing that I'm most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry is sort of the source of everything I do. It's the source of my creativity.
Erica Jong
#65. It is in this matter that I fall foul of so many American writers on writing; they seem to think that writing is a confidence game by means of which the author cajoles a restless, dull-witted, shallow audience into hearing his point of view. Such an attitude is base, and can only beget base prose.
Robertson Davies
#66. Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing.
Brenda Ueland
#67. I can focus on writing, or I can get lost in wonderfully fun but endless conversations and produce nothing new at all. I count on those people who enjoy my work to understand this.
Ken Wilber
#68. 'E.T.' was the movie that made me want to make movies in the first place, and it was the first movie that made me focus on writing instead of what happens in the movie.
Adam Green
#69. A writer is an organism that will go on writing even after its heart has been cut out.
Wallace Stegner
#70. [On writing:] The most egotistic of occupations, and the most gratifying while it lasts.
Vita Sackville-West
#71. My neck and shoulders are killing me. Hard to focus on writing about murder, doom, shagging, our hopeless future & other comedy etc etc.
Warren Ellis
#72. Write for joy. It is the *only* reason to write. Whatever happens to your books afterward, just write for joy. Send your current one out when it's done and forget it, start another, and keep on writing for joy. Words I now live by. Welwyn Wilton Katz
Welwyn Wilton Katz
#73. So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.
Clarice Lispector
#74. I should be concentrating on writing pages.
R.L. Stine
#75. Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.
Joe Haldeman
#76. How to read writers on writing: With respect, amusement, and skepticism. They will contradict one another-as they should-for each writer brings an individual history to the writing task. There is no single theology here.
Donald Murray
#77. They fuck you up, your mum and dad', and if you're planning on writing that's probably a good thing. But if you are planning on writing and they haven't fucked you up, well, you've got nothing to go on, so then they've fucked you up good and proper.
Alan Bennett
#78. I have to go on writing because I wouldn't be able to go on without writing. It is the only function that works for me, and without that function, I would die.
Farley Mowat
#79. At this stage, my chief professional goal is simply to keep on writing and making a living at it.
Fred Saberhagen
#80. On writing...
"It's a walk into the darkest corners of my imagination where my nightmares fester until something living and breathing escapes onto the screen of my laptop." JET
J.E. Taylor
#81. I liked the idea of a person shedding their life, and someone else putting it on.
-Oliver Harris on writing The Hollow Man for Crime Time online magazine
Oliver Harris
#82. Sharpen your life always; even though it will come to an end like a pencil, we have to keep on writing
Munia Khan
#83. I always encourage people in the early parts of their career to focus on writing. If you can communicate clearly, if you can articulate a thought, if you can write a great story, then you're going to be successful.
Steve Capus
#84. Stephen King, by far, is the standard-bearer. I think anyone who writes suspense fiction and says that King isn't an influence is either lying or being foolish. I read his book 'On Writing' before I read pretty much any of his fiction.
Michael Koryta
#85. It's all still about having a good story. You have to have a good story as your anchor, as your main focus. So for me, personally, I just like to concentrate on writing the best book I can, and if there's other stuff that goes along with it, that's awesome, as long as the story is central.
Rick Riordan
#86. A dry period for me means perhaps going two or three nights without writing. I probably have dry periods but I'm not aware of them and I go on writing, only the writing probably isn't much good.
Charles Bukowski
#87. I'll go on writing till the end of my days. I have been writing too long to stop.
Mary O'Hara
#88. Be that as it may, it's all I have to work with. Clutching these faded, fading, imperfect memories to my breast, I go on writing this book with all the desperate intensity of a starving man sucking on bones.
Anonymous
#89. [On writing:] What a difficult kind of work to choose! But of course one did not choose it. There was no choice.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
#90. It often seems to me that the biggest single issue for a writer is how to stay buoyant enough to go on writing. How not to drown.
Janette Turner Hospital
#91. The best advice on writing I've ever received was from William Zinsser: 'Be grateful for every word you can cut.'
Christopher Buckley
#92. On Writing About Nora Hawks
I write about a female character to try, in vain, to understand two things: the purpose of life, and women.
Dennis R. Miller
#93. I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don't know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.
J.K. Rowling
#94. I held a variety of jobs - most notably ten years working in universities - and kept on writing.
Thomas Perry
#95. It is impossible to know what fate will bring. If you love to write or paint, you will keep on writing or painting, and things will either work out or not, and you just have to keep being in the process.
Maira Kalman
#96. Over the years, I have been a house painter, farm worker, paste-up artist, Easter Bunny, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness - I quit my last real job in 2000 to work on writing full-time.
Jennifer McMahon
#97. Too often we take notes on writing, we think about writing but never do it. I want you to walk into the heart of the storm, written words dripping off hair, eyelids, hanging from hands.
Natalie Goldberg
#98. All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.
Penelope Lively
#99. Yesterday I went home with him and we did the usual things. I haven't the nerve to put them down, but I'd like to, because now when I'm writing it's already tomorrow and I'm afraid of getting to the end of yesterday. As long as I go on writing, yesterday is today and we are still together
Graham Greene
#100. By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.
Stephen King
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