Top 100 Stories Writing Quotes
#1. He reads every book in his home but it is not enough. The country boy craves stories. He devours every poem and fable in his school and library. Still he hungers. For stories.
Jennifer Lanthier
#2. Stories do not change the world. I've learned that. But perhaps in some secret, subtle way ... I mean it's not the world I want to change.
Carol Emshwiller
#3. I enjoy research as much as writing so I try to make my stories as fact-based as possible, which I think helps them seem more authentic.
Raymond Buckland
#4. Most people do a good deal of whatever they do motivated by love. For me, few stories are truly complete without it.
Sara Sheridan
#5. I had always written. I had written stories and poems. Then I started writing plays.
Lena Dunham
#7. In writing, I want to be remembered for telling good stories in beautiful and powerful language, using the poetry of words to reflect the thematic concerns of compelling stories.
Kim Edwards
#8. I've always loved books. I was an avid reader, with any number of my own stories rolling around in my head. Writing them down seemed a logical step.
Kat Martin
#9. I don't blame you for writing of me as you have. You had to believe other stories, but then I don't know if any one would believe anything good of me anyway.
Billy The Kid
#10. I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.
Jhumpa Lahiri
#11. I like to write adventure stories; that's what I tell myself. But you can't help letting your own personality, your own experiences, slip through.
Mick Farren
#12. Love is the key to everything. Love your life.
A.D. Posey
#13. I have a reputation for doing superheroes, but I like all kinds of writing. In fact, hardly anybody knows this, but I've probably written as many humor stories as superhero stories.
Stan Lee
#14. A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.
James Patterson
#15. I am a huge believer in revelations and fun twists.
Darynda Jones
#16. Sharing our personal stories makes us grateful for experiencing the radiance of being alive. Writing our personal stories documenting our vivid encounters with the larger world and examining our own time-tested ideas shapes the conception of our own being.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#17. Writing the opening lines of a story is a bit like starting to ski at the steepest part of a hill. You must have all your skills under control from the first instant.
Marion Dane Bauer
#18. For a short-story writer, a story is the combination of what the writer supposed the story would likely be about - plus what actually turned up in the course of writing.
Carol Bly
#19. Your life should reflect your heart.
A.D. Posey
#20. It's amazing what you can do when you get creative.
A.D. Posey
#21. It took me seven years of writing before I published my first story. And then, the publications trickled in over the next five years.
Rob Roberge
#22. Budget grows out of the story. If you're writing a story with people caught in an elevator for most of the film, you're pretty sure it won't be a $200 million movie.
J. Michael Straczynski
#23. I could write stories; I could hide from the world and make my own instead of trying to change it or live in it. I could make paper people and I would love them too; I could make them almost real.
Ally Condie
#24. I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.
O. Henry
#25. I'm really just trying ... to write what feels true to me. I don't think about a lofty responsibility. I think I'd be paralyzed by that. Like any of my male colleagues, I'm writing the stories that interest me in a way that feels true to me.
Kelly Sue DeConnick
#26. Literature, the act of writing, affirms life, however dark the story it tells.
Marty Rubin
#27. Everyone has a story inside them. Some are bedtimes stories, some thrill and others scare and horrify their readers. Find out what your story is and share it with the world.
C.K. Webb
#28. I've discovered I love the vast landscape a series offers. I tend to write long anyway, so, it turns out, series gives me the perfect vehicle for writing 'large' stories.
Mary E. Pearson
#29. Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.
Eudora Welty
#30. If you can't write like New York, you have no business living in New York and making New York the locale of your stories.
James M. Cain
#31. You can't learn to write that way - by writing directly for the screen. Wait until you're 30. But in the meantime write 200 short stories. You've got to learn how to write!
Ray Bradbury
#32. I began writing early - very, very early ... I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, 'Now I'm a writer.' I've always been a writer.
Wole Soyinka
#33. The writing of a novel or short story or poem or whatever should elevate the audience, not drag the writer down to some level beneath herself. And she - the author - should fight always to prevent that dragging down, especially when the only possible benefit of allowing it to happen is monetary.
Caitlin R. Kiernan
#35. Take a deep breath. Inhale peace. Exhale happiness.
A.D. Posey
#36. I've written short stories in first person, but you have so much more control writing in third person. Third person, you know what everybody's thinking. First person is very limiting, and I could never sustain a first person novel before.
Tamora Pierce
#37. The more of those little light bulbs that can turn on the better. Eventually you'll have enough to light up a movie screen.
A.D. Posey
#38. Growing up, I used to climb out my window onto the roof and look up at the stars. There, in the quiet, I would write stories inside my head.
Christy Hall
#39. Writing stories has given me the power to change things I could not change as a child. I can make boys into doctors. I can make fathers stop drinking. I can make mothers stay.
Cynthia Rylant
#40. There's a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off.
Tobias Wolff
#42. When I was painting, I was painting stories I was telling myself. When I look back at it, moving to writing was a very natural progression for me.
Janet Evanovich
#43. Us writers all like each other and want to write stories with each other; we're having a good time.
Charles Soule
#44. Hen, there's such a temptation to just constantly write things that are going to make the fans happy. Sometimes it takes a little bit of unhappiness to make those happy pay-offs work better. That's something that is fascinating to us and I think has really changed the way that stories are told.
Jeff Pinkner
#45. On the other hand, now that I'm not dependent on fiction for my income, I've been writing more short stories despite the fact that there's no real paying market for short horror other than Cemetery Dance.
George Stephen
#46. I write most of my stories the way people talk, complete with an occasional run-on sentences and stuff that seems to go around in a few circles before making its point. In a comedy, you can do that.
Dan Alatorre
#47. There was a time when I thought I turned terrible things over in my mind because I read and wrote too many scary stories. (Note self: start writing about unicorns and bunnies)
Patrick Carman
#48. As a child in Sydney, my German Mum and my Austrian Dad would spontaneously tell me stories about what they saw and what they did as children. It was like a piece of Europe coming into our house ... Those stories led me to my writing.
Markus Zusak
#50. I wasn't writing stories with the intention of creating a particular collection. I simply wrote stories, and then discovered common themes among a good number of them.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
#51. The stories are there first, and they come from my experiences wandering around in the world. They will resonate into bigger things, forces sweeping the planet, themes and archetypes, but I'm not smart enough to have lucid integration of all that in my head as I'm writing.
Bob Shacochis
#53. The one who pulls the puppet strings knows fairytales can heal.
Sally Odgers
#54. Don't look.
See.
Don't think.
Feel.
Don't hear.
Listen.
Pay attention
Miracles really do happen every day
A.D. Posey
#55. The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.
Criss Jami
#56. If you're a writer, write. You just keep writing. And if you're a filmmaker, you keep doing what you can to keep telling your stories; you don't stay on the one. Keep moving forward and doing what you can to tell whatever story you can tell, be it via writing, be it via filming it.
Dana Brunetti
#57. One of Scotland's most important cultural exports - stories.
Sara Sheridan
#58. I'm probably the most loquacious author when it comes to my dedications. The reason is there is some symbolism there. I've been writing these books, bringing these stories to my readers who I love so much, and I have a greater love for my family.
Karen Kingsbury
#59. I started off doing fiction in 1993. It didn't occur to me to do nonfiction because it wasn't a thing yet. So I was bumbling around, writing short stories, and then I took a nonfiction workshop, and I realized that this was what I was supposed to do.
Meghan Daum
#60. Art was a way for me to express myself and for me to also escape because it was tough growing up as a child. We didn't have a lot of money. I was always creating. I was writing stories. I was doing comic books. I made my own universe.
Michelle Phan
#61. Stories that pander to your every readerly desire and whim are like overly loyal dogs that live for the simple glow of your approval. I'm a cat person. I like a little aloofness in my pets and my writing.
Alden Bell
#62. I might enjoy writing some ghost stories set in Japan because their whole idea about the spirit world is so interesting.
William T. Vollmann
#63. We are storied folk. Stories are what we are; telling and listening to stories is what we do.
Arthur Kleinman
#64. Energy will go into what you love, and what you love will grow. Go for a walk and watch it bloom.
A.D. Posey
#65. I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature.
Naguib Mahfouz
#66. You will find the greatest happiness in letting yourself be.
A.D. Posey
#67. Read a short story every day. By the end of the week you would have read volumes of stories.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#68. Semi-facetiously, when people ask me why I write these kinds of stories, I simply say that I was warped as a child. And, there is some truth to that.
Stephen King
#69. I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.
Anthony Trollope
#70. All stories come from the writer's heart, and all hearts speak the same language, a wordless language ancient as time, and for the writer, this is the eternal struggle, to translate the wordless into words.
Stan D. Jensen
#71. 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
#72. I'm used to writing stories with a beginning a middle and an end in four minutes.
Steve Earle
#74. Accept nothing. Challenge everything.
A.D. Posey
#75. I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.
P.G. Wodehouse
#76. With almost every book I've written, my secret target audience is the young therapist. In this way, I am staying in my professorial role; I'm writing teaching stories and teaching novels.
Irvin D. Yalom
#77. First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.
Octavia E. Butler
#78. I always write three or four projects at the same time. They're stories that I want to tell, and usually I dump them unfinished for the next one in order not to get too cornered and depressed about it.
Pawel Pawlikowski
#79. I started writing stories in sixth grade. But writing wasn't cool, like being good at sports, or being part of the in crowd, or winning fights on the playground.
Rodman Philbrick
#80. In writing Simon's stories, I have written myself out of my own life.
K.J. Charles
#81. I love words. I crave descriptions that overwhelm my imagination with vivid detail. I dwell on phrases that make my heart thrum. I cherish expressions that pierce my emotions and force the tears to spill over. In essence, I long for a writer's soul sealed in ink on the page.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#83. My stories take three or four months to fix, and it's not magical of a process. Ultimately it's a boring, difficult process. I write everything out, and then the parts I think are funny I put in bold. Then I go perform it. Then the parts that aren't funny, I unbold them.
Kumail Nanjiani
#84. One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.
Scarlett Thomas
#86. The writing can be its own reward, as you discover more things that you can do. It counts a lot, though, when a story connects with a reader and they take the time to tell me about it.
Nick Earls
#87. Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life. The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.
Vijay Seshadri
#88. Kids love me because I write stories that tell them about their capacity for evil. I'm one of the few writers who lets you cleanse yourself that way.
Ray Bradbury
#89. 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
#91. For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out.
Eudora Welty
#93. I have always loved to read, and now that I have penned 10 novels and a few magazine articles, I have fallen seriously in love with writing stories and seeing them go out into the world. It's magical, you know?
Dorothea Benton Frank
#94. While we do have 50 years of terrific Avengers stories, many of which our writing staff has written, along the way, this has to live in its own world.
Jeph Loeb
#95. Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.
Ray Bradbury
#96. I'm the least confident person in so many ways. But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story, I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back.
Joss Whedon
#97. 'Castle' is a guy living in a fantasy world. He's in his imagination, writing these stories of murder.
Nathan Fillion
#98. I want to do some fiction writing, I've had some pretty good luck with short stories, I'd like to do a couple of larger things.
Janis Ian
#99. Writing is more than just a method to tell stories. It's a way to find healing, and to healing others.
M. Kirin
#100. The voices in my head wouldn't shut up, so I let them write their story.
Shandy L. Kurth
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