Quotes about writing

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“Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

“Now you're just being silly. He's a mercenary- he's not going to go about penning love letters, and really, what would he write? 'Anna… love you… grrr?'" Olivia to Annalia”

Kresley Cole American writer

“There are all kinds of writers. The best writers write children's books.”

Richard Scarry (1919–1994) author and illustrator from the United States

“I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“You don't need to wait for inspiration to write. It's easier to be inspired while writing that while not writing…”

Josip Novakovich (1956) Canadian writer

“I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

“You will have only one story,” she had said. “You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.”

Elizabeth Strout (1956) American writer

“I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.

[, New York Times, April 19, 1992]”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

“Get a day job, make your money from that, and write to please yourself.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

“To write is human, to edit is divine.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

“Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

“the writing of some
men
is like a vast bridge
that carries you
over
the many things
that claw and tear.

The Wine of Forever”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

“You list the dead. You tell the stories of the past. You write about the catastrophes and the massacres. What about the living, Finnikin? Who honors them?”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

“When writing the constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Adams wrote:
I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“The only kind of writing is rewriting.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

“Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction. If not so, why do so many couples who start the evening at dinner wind up in bed?”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“The only friends I have are the dead who have bequeathed their writings to me--I have no others.”

Thomas Bernhard book Concrete

“The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.”

Marge Piercy (1936) American novelist and poet

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

“I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

“Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.”

Edna Ferber (1885–1968) Novelist, playwright

“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

“One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your hear that every day is the best day of the year.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.”

Toni Cade Bambara (1939–1995) author, activist, professor

“Reading is more important than writing.”

Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) Chilean author

“don’t write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.”

Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) American poet

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. […] it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”

Ernest Hemingway book Green Hills of Africa

“When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

“Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

“He nodded and curled over his paper, writing quickly. As his words took form on the white page, she got to watch him… and realized she never wanted him to go. She wanted him here beside her forever.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

“Let's face it, writing is hell.”

William Styron (1925–2006) American novelist and essayist

“We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.”

John Fowles book The French Lieutenant's Woman

“Writing is like a sport - you only get better if you practice”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

“Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

“And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.”

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

“When I write I pretend I'm telling a story to someone in the room and I don't want them to get up until I'm finished.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

“With writing, we have second chances.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

“Write me of hope and love, and hearts that endured.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

“I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“Whether we write lyrics or craft legislation, sell homes or teach classes, design spaces or open franchises, prayer is a critical part of the creative process. Don’t just brainstorm; praystorm.”

Mark Batterson (1969) American pastor and writer

“I'm going to open another vottle. not a vottle, but a bottle. you open it and I'll drink it. and you try to write as much as I did without falling off of your chair.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

“When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty.”

Roald Dahl book Boy

“He stepped back and threw his arms out.
"I'm always crazy around you Rose. Here, I'm going to write an impromptu poem for you."
He tipped his head back and shouted to the sky:
"Rose is in red
But never in blue
Sharp as a thorn
Fights like one too.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

“Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or even if there is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than ten minutes a day; like sit-ups, they can make you thin”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

“Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears…”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

“… there were certain chapters when I stopped writing, saw the domestic situation I was in and thought, "I don't want to face this world, let's get back to the hellish one I'm imagining.”

Alasdair Gray (1934–2019) Scottish writer and artist

“Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case forbidden. But if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else.
Even when there is no one.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

“The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

“Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

“Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“I have written much less than most people who write; I have drunk much more than most people who drink.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

“It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.”

Anne Tyler (1941) American novelist

“Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?”

Elie Wiesel book Night

“Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

“I write to find out what I'm talking about.”

Edward Albee (1928–2016) American playwright

“some moments are nice, some are
nicer, some are even worth
writing
about.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.”

Enrique Jardiel Poncela (1902–1952) Spanish dramatist

“You write poems
because you need
a place
where what isn’t may be”

Alejandra Pizarnik (1936–1972) Argentinian poet

“The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping.”

Stewart O'Nan (1961) American writer

“If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

“My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

“To write a novel, you begin with what you can see and then you add what came before and what came after.

… You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“Only write from your own passion, your own truth. That's the only thing you really know about, and anything else leads you away from the pulse.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

“Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“The world before us is a postcard, and I imagine the story we are writing on it.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

“My goal is to write every day. I say it is my ideal. I am careful not to pass judgment or create anxiety if I do not do it. No one lives up to his ideal.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

“You cannot write for children… They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

“When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

“Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

“If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day… You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning…”

Walter Mosley (1952) American writer

“I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.”

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

“A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

“I often think we should have tattooed on the back of whatever hand we use to shoot or write, 'I might be wrong.”

Louise Penny book A Fatal Grace

“Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.”

John Jakes (1932) American historical novelist and fantasy writer

“One must be ruthless with one’s own writing or someone else will be.”

John Berryman (1914–1972) American poet

“Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book.”

Anita Desai (1937) Indian novelist

“Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

“She decided to free herself, dance into the wind, create a new language. And birds fluttered around her, writing “yes” in the sky.”

Monique Duval (1924–2014) Canadian journalist

“Good writing is good conversation, only more so.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs… The way I write is who I am, or have become…”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

“Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

“Digestion of words as well; I often read aloud to myself in my writing corner in the library, where no one can hear me, for the sake of better savouring the text, so as to make it all the more mine.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

“Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?”

Brian W. Kernighan (1942) Canadian computer scientist

“Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

“I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

“I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924) English-American childrens' playwright and author

“When it comes to people -- don't write about who you know; but what you know of human nature.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

“There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

“It doesn't matter where or how far you go - the farther commonly the worse - the important thing is how alive you are. Writing of every kind is a way to wake oneself up and keep as alive as when one has just fallen in love.”

Pico Iyer (1957) British writer

“A question I've thought about a great deal is why it is so much easier to write about the things we dislike/hate/acknowledge to be flawed than the things we love.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

“Keep it kickwriting at all costs too, that is, write only what kicks you and keeps you overtime awake from sheer mad joy.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road