Top 100 Writer Inspiration Quotes
#1. I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.
Harlan Coben
#2. There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.
Harlan Coben
#3. Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind.
Sara Sheridan
#4. Learn the writer's craft, write regularly, grow to love the practice for its own sake-and inspiration will either come on a particular day or it won't, but you'll have prepared the way for it.
Dennis Palumbo
#6. While I do believe I become a technically better writer over time, in others ways writing gets harder because inspiration is finite.
Steve Erickson
#7. I am a writer because I write, an author because I create, a poet because the words are in my soul.
Wesley D. Gray
#9. I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.
Toni Morrison
#10. My dad taught me that to be a writer is a decision and a habit. It's not anything lofty, and it doesn't have that much to do with inspiration. You have to develop the habit of being a certain way with yourself. You do it at the debt of honor.
Anne Lamott
#11. Let your story grow. Let it surprise you, and it will certainly surprise your readers.
M. Kirin
#12. Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he's far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am really saying), he can't afford self-doubt and he can't let other people's opinions, even a father's, keep him from writing.
Wallace Stegner
#13. Writers get ideas all day every day. The FedEx guy delivers a package from Sears and the writer is thinking how it could actually be a ticking time bomb.
Dan Alatorre
#14. Everybody is born with a little bit of writer in them. We all come with the desire to work hard to see our creations come to life on the page. But it is those who choose to do something about this passion that has been ignited inside of them that are true writers.
Brian A. McBride
#15. She (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.
Steven Pressfield
#16. Being passionate about something is the most beautiful characteristic you can develop.
Charlotte Eriksson
#17. Never let negativity derail your journey as a writer. Use the energy for your own betterment.
Guadalupe Neri
#18. One of my favorite writers is short story writer/essayist Jorge Luis Borges, who was blind. I'm not claiming to be anything remotely resembling a talent of Borges' caliber, but he is an inspiration and a proof that one can be a meaningful and successful writer while blind.
Larry Howes
#19. People don't remember lessons. They remember stories.
Kamand Kojouri
#20. ...you are a writer the moment you start writing, not when you've sold your first book.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#21. You're writing someone's 'future' favorite book.
M. Kirin
#22. At the outset, my notion of being a writer was that you would have moments of inspiration and moments of frustration, when you'd crumple up your pages and toss them away. On one side, the dustbin would fill up, and on the other side, pages would rise into a novel.
Tom Rachman
#23. The idea of writer's block or not having inspiration is totally terrifying to me.
Paul Dano
#24. If you wait for inspiration to write you're not a writer, you're a waiter.
Dan Poynter
#25. You think you have no 'talent'? Write anyway. lots of people with 'talent' don't actually act on it. As long as you write, you will learn, you will improve, and you will be better than anyone claiming to have 'talent.
M. Kirin
#26. I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.
Michael Moorcock
#27. Writing is an adventure. There is no way to know where it will take you, and what you will find. You could find success. You could find fans. Or, best of all, you could find yourself.
M. Kirin
#28. Today is your wright-time. Anything worth writing will be, or has been written already. A great story chooses its writer lest no wright should boast. Just write! If you don't, you will come right in contact with your thoughts someplace soon.
Amah Lambert
#29. How do you paint a writer's block?
Just fill it with fifty shades of black.
Ana Claudia Antunes
#30. As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there's no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better
but you keep working anyway.
Ivan Turgenev
#31. Today is the day that you create worlds, you change lives, you make a something, a someone, out of nothing.
Today is the day you become a writer.
Alessandra Torre
#33. I always begin with a source of inspiration that comes from nature. The story comes from my research, volunteering, and meeting the people involved in that story world. I am an intuitive writer and an image, sound, experience can all inspire a scene or a plot twist!
Mary Alice Monroe
#34. Through the act of writing, a writer learns more about himself than he could ever imagine.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#35. When I told my teachers I wanted to be a writer, alot of them encouraged me to lower my expectations and to be more realistic. So I rode away on my magical, winged horse, spraying faerie dust behind me, and laughing manically as I went.
M.E. Vaughan
#36. Perhaps in actions I'm less of a man - but, oh the words - such lovely words ...
John Geddes
#37. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob, before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.
Henry David Thoreau
#38. If you want to be a professional writer then you need to write consistently. Inspiration strikes about once every blue moon which, for me, is once every two and a half to three months, which is when I'll get really and truly inspired about something.
Christopher Paolini
#39. Tolkien was such a brilliant writer in so many ways. He was truly an inspiration. Many people don't realize just how much he researched and how much he based his stories and characters on mythology of various types. He was very deep and in many ways a genius.
Raymond Buckland
#40. Every time a written word is put to page it is the opportunity to expand our minds, whether we are the writer or the reader. Enjoy the journey wherever it may take you!
K. Lamb
#41. Any writer takes inspiration from what they read and watch, and over their career works on forming their own voice. I think it was probably Stephen King who made me want to become a writer.
Tim Lebbon
#42. I've long considered becoming a writer to be the death of nightmares. For me at least, since I started writing I hadn't had any. Something really terrible or awful happens in a dream and you wake up and think, awesome, and reach for a pen and paper.
Logan Kain
#44. Is every writer's keyboard a spill magnet?
A.D. Posey
#45. It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.
Isaac Asimov
#46. We as authors sign a pact with our readers; they'll go on reading because they trust us to play fair with them and deliver what we've promised.
Pamela Glass Kelly
#47. Do you think you're not 'ready' to start that big story idea/project you've been thinking about forever?
Jump in. Write anyway. The only way to make the impossible a reality is to take a leap of faith.
M. Kirin
#49. Don't forget Who you are writing for. It's easy to get discouraged when people don't like your writing, but that's just it. They're people. You don't want to serve people, you want to serve God. Write for Him, and ignore what other people say. It just doesn't matter.
Ivy Rose
#50. Description is the color in the canvas of your story.
M. Kirin
#51. My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.
Patricia MacLachlan
#52. A writer will find inspiration anywhere. They have to look and see, that's all. Then they have to write.
Dermott Hayes
#53. My dad is a writer, and to see him always in front of a typewriter gave me the inspiration to write. He was my idol, my hero. I wanted to be just like him.
Shakira
#54. I couldn't believe a man had written this! Ryker had a way with words and the way with words and the way my emotions got twisted in them was a gift only a true writer possessed.
Sarah Brocious
#56. People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.
Sara Sheridan
#57. My favorite thing is being able to follow my inspiration, and the freedom of being a writer is hard to beat.
Mike White
#58. A deadline gets a writer's work done done better and faster than any inspiration, if only because inspirations don't always come, but the deadline is always there.
A.A. Patawaran
#59. Writers are creatures of habit, as are humans, but writers aren't necessarily human, are they?
Alyssa Hubbard
#62. As I am a work in progress, you shall see me more or less? Don't shake me out if I digress. As of me less, from me more of my work, I guess.
Ana Claudia Antunes
#64. Being a writer is 1% inspiration, 50% perspiration and 49% explaining you're not a millionaire like J.K.Rowling.
Gabrielle Tozer
#65. A writer will always be a writer. It's not a choice, it's a destiny.
Stephanie Lennox
#66. Folding the laundry, completing another project at work, or watching television for the next hour doesn't build your writing muscles. It only leaves them flabby.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#67. TODAY IS A GREAT DAY TO MAKE ART.
M. Kirin
#68. A writer must get beyond the thrill of a byline, plunge deeper than the words themselves, and dive head-on into a bottomless pit where all the good stories are swimming around waiting to be rescued from the soul."
Kathleen M. Rodgers ~ 1998
Kathleen M. Rodgers
#69. If you really want to be a writer, nobody can stop you
and if you don't, nobody can help you.
Alma Alexander
#70. A writer should never wait for inspiration but be the inspiration.
Debasish Mridha
#71. If you only had a year left to live, what book would you write?
Now, write that book.
M. Kirin
#73. I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.
P.J. Harvey
#74. You were meant to write this book.
M. Kirin
#76. Writers don't forget the past; they turn it into raw material.
Joyce Rachelle
#77. Make today the day you begin that awesome idea you have had for years. Now go, write this book, and remember that today is an important day in history.
M. Kirin
#78. I write because if I don't let it out of my system, I will die with guilt.
Shahla Khan
#79. All you have to do is put one word after another, and remember how great it feels to be a writer.
Stephanie Lennox
#80. Every word I write is another stroke that takes me to the shore of a completed book.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#81. Being a writer is 10% inspiration, 80% dedication and 10% going to the post office.
Jay Royston
#82. The real world is the fantasy writer's scrapbook. Real history, real geography, real customs and religions are all invaluable sources of guidance and inspiration.
Lynn Flewelling
#83. If words come alive on the page, the writer succeeds in connecting to the reader.
Aman Jassal
#84. The only way to overcome fear and doubt is to go against them.
M. Kirin
#85. We want books that make our hearts beat harder... that relieve us of the agonizing burden of everyday life
Ben Oliveira
#86. I wanted to say all these things about how you just have to hold on to the things you love and let go of all the rest.
Charlotte Eriksson
#87. Every writer in the history of the world has been afraid to put words on the page. But we only remember those who overcame that fear.
M. Kirin
#88. I know nothing of writing books properly. I write in the same manner I live life: one feeling at a time. If this makes me a bad writer, then I might hope to author several bad books.
Cara Rosalie Olsen
#89. Every writer scrounges for inspiration in different places, and there's no shame in raiding the headlines. It's necessary, in fact, when attempting contemporary satire. Sharp-edged humor relies on topical reference points.
Carl Hiaasen
#90. The blank page is the canvas on which a writer paints a story.
Stephanie Ayers
#91. Inspiration is just one requirement for being a writer. Another is keeping regular working hours.
Zelda Popkin
#92. Become my muse. And let me paint you with my words...
Avijeet Das
#93. And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.
Neil Gaiman
#94. I will not stop singing
the Muses who set me dancing.
Anne Carson
#96. If I believed people who told me you can't make a living as a writer, I wouldn't be making a living as a writer.
William Meikle
#97. A writer of any merit does not worry about being accepted everywhere. He must write to inspire, to change for the better or to challenge the status quo!
Avijeet Das
#98. A good writer reveals beauty in the mundane and truth in tragedy. Words are a tool; a currency of the mind, and the best writers weave passages into our hearts that our bones remember.
Maria Reeves
#99. If you can't write, read.
If you can't read, walk.
Or walk and read, then write.
Joyce Rachelle
#100. You will not publish 100% of the books you don't write.
M. Kirin
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