109 Inspiring Author Quotes

If you're a book lover or an aspiring writer, there's nothing quite like the power of an inspiring quote from a beloved author to reignite your passion for words. Quotes from our literary heroes can provide a glimpse into their creative minds, encourage us during moments of writer's block, or simply remind us of the beauty of storytelling. Whether you're seeking motivation, wisdom, or a touch of literary magic, you're in the right place. Dive into our curated collection of the top 109 inspiring author quotes, each one selected to uplift, provoke thought, and spark your imagination.

1. “The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.” - Vladimir Nabokov

2. “Determine the result you desire..law of averages does not know the objective untill the decision is made. Once a decision is made, the law of averages goes into operation.” - Earl Prevette

3. “I felt after I finished Slaughterhouse-Five that I didn’t have to write at all anymore if I didn’t want to. It was the end of some sort of career. I don’t know why, exactly. I suppose that flowers, when they’re through blooming, have some sort of awareness of some purpose having been served. Flowers didn’t ask to be flowers and I didn’t ask to be me. At the end of Slaughterhouse-Five…I had a shutting-off feeling…that I had done what I was supposed to do and everything was OK .” - Kurt Vonnegut

4. “The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging. ” - Virginia Woolf

5. “Give a poet a pen” - A. Jarrell Hayes

6. “My author role model is Kurata Misako. I want to be rich enough to drive from room to room in my home but also down to earth enough to let squirrels live in my hair.” - Christy Leigh Stewart

7. “Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness. ” - kate dicamillo

8. “As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about. But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?” - Milan Kundera

9. “Pregressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensity social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation” - Angela Davis

10. “1. Write like you’ll live forever — fear is a bad editor.2. Write like you’ll croak today — death is the best editor.3. Fooling others is fun. Fooling yourself is a lethal mistake.4. Pick one — fame or delight.5. The archer knows the target. The poet knows the wastebasket.6. Cunning and excess are your friends.7. TV and liquor are your enemies.8. Everything eternal happens in a spare room at 3 a.m.9. You’re done when the crows sing.” - Ron Dakron

11. “But writers experience the world and themselves in a unique way. We look for meaning. We see it even when we are not paying attention, which is seldom because, as writers, paying attention is what we do. We are scribes to the ticking of the days, and we have a job to do. We are not at peace unless we are doing it.” - Larry Brooks

12. “Christ asks for a home in your soul, where he can be at rest with you, where he can talk easily to you, where you and he, alone together, can laugh and be silent and be delighted with one another.” - Caryll Houselander

13. “You can't become a star just by watching one on TV. Dream big and go for your goals!” - Koltn Burbank

14. “Sometimes writing everyday is like pulling teeth, painful, but necessary.” - Wendy Swore

15. “AuthorZoom- You do the writing, let us do the rest.” - Christopher Seufert

16. “Where Norman Rockwell is the Artist for the man on the street, O'Henry is his author.” - Sonia Rumzi

17. “Remain humble in your journey as an author and your audience will embrace you. Remain grateful for every publicity opportunity that comes your way, and the media will embrace you.” - Linda F. Radke

18. “May my heart be kind, my mind fierce, and my spirit brave.” - Kate Forsyth

19. “I'll write'em if you'll read'em” - Robert Lee Thompson

20. “Being a writer is a good, good thing.” - Shannon Hale

21. “The only happy author in this world is he who is below the care of reputation.” - Washington Irving

22. “New York City, city of exaggerations. Place of Herculean ascensions and perilous falls.” - Kurt Wenzel

23. “Most people keep their dreams to themselves, afraid to follow their hearts. Writers make their dreams a reality with each word, each line that flows from their pen.” - CK Webb

24. “~Reading a book is like looking through a window!” - Zetta Hupf

25. “I'd always admired writers. I'd always loved words on a page. Somehow, words seemed to bypass image and get straight to the heart of things. Somehow, words seemed big enough to contain pain, and sentences could pull broken bits together.” - Rosie O'Donnell

26. “I crept in to find my father with pennies on his eyes - and looking closer I saw they were made of foil-covered chocolate. Of course I stole and ate them. Magical guilt? Tell me about it” - steve aylett

27. “He had long been curious at leaders intermittent calls for a return to past values and had tested the notion by trying to build a house from the sky downwards” - steve aylett

28. “Let your words be your voice. And let your voice be heard within the hearts of others.” - Anasia Nicole Hixon

29. “Предпочитам да общувам с хора, които не са прочели нито една книга, отколкото с някого, който мисли, че Гришам е писател.” - Радослав Парушев

30. “I'm the first to admit that I don't write right. Now, relax and enjoy the show! The sideshow, that is.” - Lori R. Lopez

31. “There is no greater feeling of accomplishment than to create a world that solely exists in your imagination and be able to pull someone into this hidden place inside of my thoughts. To make someone care for a person that has manifested from my dreams, to make them hate me for putting them in danger, and for them to ask to be taken on another journey with me when it is all said and done is why I write.” - Teresa Mummert

32. “Yeah, I write Urban Fantasy, but its more like Die Hard or Indiana Jones with Fairies, Mummies and a Vampire who uses guns more than his teeth.” - Kevin James Breaux

33. “He has tongue of a writer.” - Toba Beta

34. “Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith's trunk. Behind Tacy's house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the stories she had told Tacy and Tib seemed to be dancing in those trees, along with all the stories she planned to write some day and all the stories she would read at the library. Good stories. Great stories. The classics. Not Rena's novels.” - Maud Hart Lovelace

35. “Now may this little Book a blessing beTo those that love this little Book, and me:And may its Buyer have no cause to say,His money is but lost, or thrown away.” - John Bunyan

36. “Warfare is a series of tragedies enjoined by logistics.” - Kevin Carson

37. “The approach to digital culture I abhor would indeed turn all the world's books into one book, just as Kevin (Kelly) suggested. It might start to happen in the next decade or so. Google and other companies are scanning library books into the cloud in a massive Manhattan Project of cultural digitization. What happens next is what's important. If the books in the cloud are accessed via user interfaces that encourage mashups of fragments that obscure the context and authorship of each fragment, there will be only one book. This is what happens today with a lot of content; often you don't know where a quoted fragment from a news story came from, who wrote a comment, or who shot a video. A continuation of the present trend will make us like various medieval religious empires, or like North Korea, a society with a single book. The Bible can serve as a prototypical example. Like Wikipedia, the Bible's authorship was shared, largely anonymous, and cumulative, and the obscurity of the individual authors served to create an oracle-like ambience for the document as "the literal word of God." If we take a non-metaphysical view of the Bible, it serves as a link to our ancestors, a window. The ethereal, digital replacement technology for the printing press happens to have come of age in a time when the unfortunate ideology I'm criticizing dominates technological culture. Authorship - the very idea of the individual point of view - is not a priority of the new ideology. The digital flattening of expression into a global mush is not presently enforced from the top down, as it is in the case of a North Korean printing press. Instead, the design of software builds the ideology into those actions that are the easiest to perform on the software designs that are becoming ubiquitous. It is true that by using these tools, individuals can author books or blogs or whatever, but people are encouraged by the economics of free content, crowd dynamics, and lord aggregators to serve up fragments instead of considered whole expressions or arguments. The efforts of authors are appreciated in a manner that erases the boundaries between them.The one collective book will absolutely not be the same thing as the library of books by individuals it is bankrupting. Some believe it will be better; others, including me, believe it will be disastrously worse. As the famous line goes from Inherit the Wind: 'The Bible is a book... but it is not the only book' Any singular, exclusive book, even the collective one accumulating in the cloud, will become a cruel book if it is the only one available.” - Jaron Lanier

38. “When I die I hope it may be said:'Her suffering was black, but her books were read'.” - Shannon Alder

39. “Not matter what your sacred or religious book is, it's not how well you know the book, it's how well you're in alignment with the author.” - Steve Maraboli

40. “What's cheaper than a gallon of gas? An ebook. Save a dollar, stay home and read!” - Shandy L. Kurth

41. “I believe that a writer is a person who writes. An author is a person who has written.” - Dean Wesley Smith

42. “I don't believe it pays to be a great author.” - Jean Webster

43. “Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.” - Mikhail Bulgakov

44. “If Fran Lebowitz and Ian Fleming had blessed the world with a love child it would have been author J. Fields Jr.” - Edward Medina

45. “Content is King. Promotion is Queen” - Bob Mayer

46. “To be or not to be wasn't the question meant; it was the secret answer hidden in riddled defense.” - Michael Anthony Gill-Branion

47. “The purpose of having the orphans study all these diverse fields was not for them to just become geniuses, but to become polymaths – meaning they would be geniuses in a wide variety of fields.” - James Morcan, Lance Morcan

48. “This is for everyone who has ever looked at the stars, or gazed from atop a hill, or across the sea and wondered...” - Tim Perkins

49. “Originality, not Intelligence, is the sign of a brilliant Author. All the Education in the world won't help someone who can't think for themselves.” - A.M. Sawyer

50. “I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.” - Mark Twain

51. “A critic is a legless man who teaches other people to run” - Channing Pollock

52. “What are the messages that you are entertaining?” - Asa Don Brown

53. “I’m 100% certain of the quality of story I’m writing until I finish the outline and actually begin to write. At this point, I’m 100% certain the story sucks and I will never show it to another living soul. Until I type “THE END.” At this point, I’m 50% certain it sucks, 50% certain it’s brilliant, and 100% certain if I don’t show it to someone I will spontaneously combust.” - Renee Miller

54. “In the shower today I tried to think about the best advice I'd ever been given by another writer. There was something that someone said at my first Milford, about using style as a covering, but sooner or later you would have to walk naked down the street, that was useful...And then I remembered. It was Harlan Ellison about a decade ago.He said, "Hey. Gaiman. What's with the stubble? Every time I see you, you're stubbly. What is it? Some kind of English fashion statement?""Not really.""Well? Don't they have razors in England for Chrissakes?""If you must know, I don't like shaving because I have a really tough beard and sensitive skin. So by the time I've finished shaving I've usually scraped my face a bit. So I do it as little as possible.""Oh." He paused. "I've got that too. What you do is, you rub your stubble with hair conditioner. Leave it a couple of minutes, then wash it off. Then shave normally. Makes it really easy to shave. No scraping."I tried it. It works like a charm. Best advice from a writer I've ever received.” - Neil Gaiman

55. “There are days when writing is within my power and a story unfolds along a course I've already chosen.  And then there are days when the words breathe on their own and take me by the hand, leading me along unfathomed paths.  Either way, the end result is this author's fairy tale.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

56. “The first step to Happiness is deciding exactly what kind of life you want. That kinda comes from experience.” - I.B. Opene

57. “...ending a book with a sequel in such a way that the reader still has faith in the characters and in the writer. That's finesse.” - Shandy L. Kurth

58. “I'm pretty much looking for beauty all the time. It just seems like some days the light is better to see it.” - Melodie Ramone

59. “On having a backup plan: "Always a good plan anytime you want to follow your dream - I love writing, acting, and psychiatry - there are crazy people everywhere which means I can take my career anywhere my dream needs to go.” - Samantha Steele

60. “...I happen to be the kind of author who in starting to work on a book has no purpose than to get rid of that book....” - Vladimir Nabokov

61. “Time is a funny thing, it can give and it can take away; and a single moment in time can truly change one’s life forever! The best kind of love is unexpected, unexplainable, undeniable, and unimaginable.Your sweet scent will forever be with me, reminding me of the love we once shared. I will breathe in the memories until we meet again.Before you act on what you have been told, consider your source. It may simply be assumption on their part, and that can be far from fact.Why stand back and wait for someone to fail when you can stand up and offer your support?Love is when the sound of your partner’s snoring lulls you to sleep, and it acts as a reminder that they are there by your side.Building a wall around your heart is a voluntary imprisonment to which only you have the key. Open your heart to life’s possibilities!” - Donna L. Jones

62. “I have had my say, as he wished. Now the book belongs, as he points out, to the world he claims to speak for.” - Julian Darius

63. “As long as one person reads the bullshit I put on paper, and likes it, i'll keep writing.” - Benjamin Bayani

64. “As a writer, you must truly possess a love for words.""Yes, that's right," I agreed."I've noticed that some authors favor particular words, making frequent use of them. Do you have a favorite?"I nodded assuredly and shared my answer. "BECAUSE."My interviewer looked surprised, as though he'd expected an impressive adjective or some rare verb. "That's your favorite word? Why?"I tried not to smirk. "Because.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

65. “There is no good or bad author; there is only one kind of an author, that who connects with the readers.” - Saru Singhal

66. “The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning.” - Anne Tyler

67. “You know you're a writer when the words don't stop!” - Joyce Middleton

68. “The gold of life is for those bold and brave in life.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

69. “Ending a series is a difficult one .......where should a story that you have followed for so long end? When do you step away from the characters and let the readers decide their fate from there? When they can stand on their own is my only answer for that.” - Shandy L. Kurth

70. “I am more optimistic, both about reading and about books. There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers – there always were. Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.” - Julian Barnes

71. “I like to read and write because it is the ONLY thing that takes my mind off of the real world and my spinning worries. It is a time I can be free of anxiety, worry, and stress. When my life gets hectic I HAVE to read and write or I'll drown.” - Shandy L. Kurth

72. “I look forward to seeing more of this author's writings. Linda Strong” - Vicki M. Taylor

73. “Art is a captured emotion. When I say this I mean all artists, whether you are a photographer, a writer, or sculptor, you are trying to capture the way someone or something made you feel. As a story teller I am trying to captivate the audience and allow them to feel just a small portion of the emotion I am desperately trying to preserve.” - Tommy Tran

74. “No matter what you write, no matter how meticulous and painstaking the creation process, someone is going to laugh, scorn, and dissect your work with criticism while another quietly falls in love with it.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

75. “Artistry exists in everyone. What makes it blossom is a soul's personal desire to find an outlet for expression.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

76. “The unification of worlds is an author's priority, as one of them surely resides forbidden to the public.” - Paul Andreas Wunderlich

77. “ولكن ألا ترين أن علةالبلاء فى الكلام ، كل واحد منا لديه عالم كامل فى نفسه ، و كل واحد منا له عالمه الخاص ! فكيف يفهم بعضنا بعضا أيها السادة إذا كنت أضع فى كلماتى التى أقولها معانى و قيم الأشياء كما أفهمها فى عالمى أنا ، بينما يفترض من يستمع إلى إن كلماتى لها المعانى و القيم الخاصة بعالمه هو ، نحن نظن أننا سوف نتقابل ، و الواقع أننا لن نتقابل أبدا !” - Luigi Pirandello

78. “Why certainly, words possess power.  They do!  But releasing their magic requires combining and arranging those words in the right order.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

79. “When I finally find that one willing agent, I'll have found my prize in the Cracker Jack box.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

80. “To fight discouragement, remind yourself of the basics: I can write.I have the opportunity to do so. I love what I write. Now smile and be thankful.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

81. “An author is like an incompetent bricklayer - doesn't use mortar and keeps rearranging the bricks until someone tells him to stop.” - Chris Everheart

82. “The heart is a place with worm holes made by feelings you aren't supposed to have but do.” - Elizabeth Scott

83. “When I sit down to write I actually ask myself, 'Who do you want to be today?'” - Richelle E. Goodrich

84. “I think people need hope when times are tough. I think they also need escape and adventure and fantasy. Books are like cheap mini vacations.” - Michelle M. Pillow

85. “Sometimes just looking into a person's eyes can tell a graphic story and a brilliant novel if you have the ability to turn it into words.” - L L Caulton

86. “Fairy tales are make believe and reality sucks, but I happen to live in both worlds.” - Emily Hodson

87. “You should really stay true to your own style. When I first started writing, everybody said to me, 'Your style just isn't right because you don't use the really flowery language that romances have.' My romances - compared to what's out there - are very strange, very odd, very different. And I think that's one of the reasons they're selling.” - Jude Deveraux

88. “I heart my job. I get to make things up for a living.” - Michelle M. Pillow

89. “It was a flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly nothing.” - Tim O'Brien

90. “Life's too short, drive it like ya stole it!” - Debra L. Hartmann

91. “She had words in her heart which she released thru her fingertips.” - Eveli Acosta

92. “If you're not writing, you're wronging.” - Kevin James Breaux

93. “I know who the real hero is, and it isn't me or brave Lanaya. It's an old man with a white beard and a walking stick and a heart so big it won't let him stop thinking he can change the world by writing down things in a book no one will ever read.” - Rodman Philbrick

94. “A well-developed and versed character will write the story for you.” - A.R. Voss

95. “Do not compare yourself with anybody. Compare yourself with yourself, for yourself and by yourself. We are all uniquely pottered and purposed by our creator!” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

96. “It is an awesome tragedy in this life that, when asking what a person is and they reply doctor or lawyer or engineer, we don't say "Well thats a nice little hobby, but why don't you take up writing or painting or music?” - D.A. Botta

97. “Ideally, love is unconditional; practically, it is more often the opposite.” - T.F. Hodge

98. “We live in the information age and the sheer volume of it being available everywhere, creates a need for information that has value. Yes, we can look anything up on Google but who has the time? Can we trust that the information comes from a trustworthy source? Your experience has given you a deep knowing of your subject matter. You have insights and ideas that others may not figure out on their own. You are holding a roadmap that has great value to someone. What has been stopping you from sharing your knowledge? Perhaps you have been afraid to put yourself out there because of a fear of rejection? Let me get straight to the point. Get over it right now! Ponder the following quote for a moment and then move on with the decision to write rather than not to write, because not to write is not “to be”. You deny yourself and your audience. You have had an incredible journey to get to where you are and have amassed experience and knowledge. Now combine that with your unique voice and be heard. You are already an expert. Accept it.” - Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

99. “Write the ending first and then you'll know before the opening sentence that it's going to be a good book.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

100. “I reached into the pile and pulled out a few connected chips and then was about to shove them into my mouth, when I saw what appeared to be the face of an angel sitting next to me. And, if it was in fact my actual guardian angel, then it probably would have been poor form not to offer a few chips to extend an olive branch.” - Phil Wohl

101. “People who make snide comments to authors like "anyone can write a book" or "well, you did it, so obviously I can/it can't be that hard" or poke at a book because it's "romance" or "genre fiction" and act like that somehow makes it substandard because they don't read it... well, ok, go ahead. Write a bestseller. Don't forget to go through the correct edit process. We'll wait.” - Michelle M. Pillow

102. “For some reason, when people meet me and find out I'm a writer they always ask if I write children's books. Um... please don't let your kids read my books. Well, unless your kids are in their 30s or something...then yeah, they're old enough. LOL” - Michelle M. Pillow

103. “The obsession with correct political belief and expression in art is stultifying the genre as it is necessarily exclusive. We are losing our voice in artificial, forced homogeny posing as tolerance. Propaganda-disguised-as-story drives readers away as agenda takes the place of wonder, excitement, character. and conflict.” - Scott M. Roberts

104. “There is a brilliant novel in all of us. Some imagine it…others live it. Authors dwell in an auspicious life by having the ability to fuse the two.” - Carl Henegan

105. “Expression is a function of intention and intention emanates from your thought faculty.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

106. “Do not wait and hope to be discovered...make yourself so you cannot be denied!” - Jamie McCall

107. “You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up.” - Thomas Harris

108. “Your smile is your logo, your personality is your business card, how you leave others feeling after having an experience with you becomes your trademark.” - Jay Danzie

109. “Inspirations are priceless & limitless.” - Jay Danzie