113 Inspiring Quotes On Writing

Writing is an art form that allows us to express thoughts, emotions, and stories in a way that resonates with readers across the globe. Yet, even the most renowned authors and writers often encounter blocks or seek inspiration to fuel their creative process. Whether you're an aspiring novelist, an experienced journalist, or someone who writes for personal satisfaction, words of wisdom from those who have walked the literary path can spark motivation and reignite passion. In this curated collection of the top 113 inspiring quotes on writing, you'll find timeless insights that celebrate the craft and offer encouragement to embrace your unique voice. Let these words be a guiding light as you navigate the beautiful, complex world of writing.

1. “Once you start thinking about the lies people tell when they don't know they're telling them, the truths people reveal when they think they're lying, then you can start to build a world.” - Sarah Rees Brennan

2. “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

3. “You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” - Jack London

4. “I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.” - Herman Melville

5. “Running a close second [as a writing lesson] was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.” - Stephen King

6. “A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.” - Norton Juster

7. “I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words.” - Craig Claiborne

8. “Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?” - Connie Willis

9. “Write what should not be forgotten.” - Isabel Allende

10. “You can fix anything but a blank page.” - Nora Roberts

11. “A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?” - George Orwell

12. “And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.” - Dorothy Parker

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

14. “Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.” - Leonard Bernstein

15. “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.” - Hemingway, Ernest

16. “A good book isn't written, it's rewritten.” - Phyllis A. Whitney

17. “I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.” - Philip Pullman

18. “Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.” - Mark Twain

19. “The pen is the tongue of the mind.” - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

20. “Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

21. “I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

22. “There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.” - Stephen King

23. “Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.” - Mark Twain

24. “It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.” - Sinclair Lewis

25. “To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.” - Robert Frost

26. “Only a mediocre person is always at his best. ” - W. Somerset Maugham

27. “You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

28. “Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.” - David Sedaris

29. “The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.” - Blaise Pascal

30. “A novel rough draft is like bread dough; you need to beat the crap out of it for it to rise.” - Chris Baty

31. “Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.” - Raymond Chandler

32. “A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.” - Mark Twain

33. “When King Lear dies in act five, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He has written, 'He dies.' No more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential piece of dramatic literature is, 'He dies.' Now I am not asking you to be happy at my leaving but all I ask you to do is to turn the page and let the next story begin.-- Mr. Magorium” - Suzanne Weyn

34. “People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.” - Flannery O'Connor

35. “Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly.” - Stephen King

36. “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” - William Wordsworth

37. “You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.” - Adrienne Rich

38. “I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.” - William Faulkner

39. “If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.” - Ray Bradbury

40. “Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious."[Ten rules for writing fiction, The Guardian, 20 February 2010 (with Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, and AL Kennedy)]” - P. D. James

41. “If you've got a message, send a telegram.” - Samuel Goldwyn

42. “I write because I love how I feel to have written.” - Carol Lynch Williams

43. “Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason -- if the worlds are in any way blurred -- the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'.” - Raymond Carver

44. “V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse gives life, turned into something that illuminates the moment and may, if we're lucky -- that word again -- have even further ranging consequences and meaning. The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things -- like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right they can hit all the notes.” - Raymond Carver

45. “I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.” - Joyce Carol Oates

46. “There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.” - Mark Twain

47. “Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!” - Edna Ferber

48. “Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half of a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess.” - Howard Mittelmark

49. “In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?” - Rainer Maria Rilke

50. “I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn” - Robert Frost

51. “If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?” - Joyce Carol Oates

52. “The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.” - Stephen King

53. “I am really very grateful for this Award. It is one of the first given to a woman, and to two women at that. When I first started getting work published, I used to have wistful thoughts at the way all important awards were given to men. Women, I used to think, could be as innovative, imaginative and productive as possible - and women were the ones mostly at work in the field of fantasy for children and young adults - but only let a man enter the field, and people instantly regarded what he had to say and what he did as more Important. He got respectful reviews as well as awards, even if what he was doing - which it often was - was imitating the women. But you have changed all that. Thank you for being so enlightened.Women, large-minded, formidable women, have played an almost exclusive part in helping my career. I have hardly ever dealt with a man - at least, when it came to publishing: ” - Diana Wynne Jones

54. “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

55. “Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.” - Bertrand Russell

56. “Use the right word, not its second cousin.” - Mark Twain

57. “Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.” - Truman Capote

58. “A book is not completed till it's read.” - Salman Rushdie

59. “All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.” - Umberto Eco

60. “Don't tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.” - Bernard Cornwall

61. “If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.” - Joyce Carol Oates

62. “We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little. ” - Anne Lamott

63. “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

64. “The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.” - William Faulkner

65. “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.” - Ernest Hemingway

66. “When someone is mean to me, I just make them a victim in my next book.” - Mary Higgins Clark

67. “Really, becoming a writer sounds more like a mental illness than a professional choice.” - Shannon Hale

68. “Being an author, is being a dictator. (in a good way)” - Pseudonymous Bosch

69. “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascendThe brightest heaven of invention,A kingdom for a stage, princes to actAnd monarchs to behold the swelling scene!Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fireCrouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,The flat unraised spirits that have daredOn this unworthy scaffold to bring forthSo great an object: can this cockpit holdThe vasty fields of France? or may we cramWithin this wooden O the very casquesThat did affright the air at Agincourt?O, pardon! since a crooked figure mayAttest in little place a million;And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,On your imaginary forces work.Suppose within the girdle of these wallsAre now confined two mighty monarchies,Whose high upreared and abutting frontsThe perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;Into a thousand parts divide on man,And make imaginary puissance;Think when we talk of horses, that you see themPrinting their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,Turning the accomplishment of many yearsInto an hour-glass: for the which supply,Admit me Chorus to this history;Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.” - William Shakespeare

70. “It's not about you, it's about the story. It's not about the folks who raise an eyebrow because you're not yet published or not yet J.K. Rowling. It's not about what that lady at church may think or, for that matter, the critics. It's not about the fact that you can't please everyone, and it's sure as heck not about the odds. In the immortal words of Gold Five, "Stay on target." You may or may not be the one who destroys the Death Star. But you're a hero if you get out of your own way, put it all on the line, and try.” - Cynthia Leitich Smith

71. “Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.” - Edward Albee

72. “But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.” - Stephen King

73. “In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book. All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try. And no one can help me. Not even you.” - Ray Bradbury

74. “I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining-- small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.” - John Steinbeck

75. “So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” - Dr. Seuss

76. “The main thing is to WRITE. Some days it might be 2000 words. Some days you might tinker with two sentences until you get them just right. Both days belong in the writing life. Some days you may watch a ‘Doctor Who’ marathon or become immersed in a book that is so good you can’t stop reading. Some days you may be in love or in mourning. Those days belong in the writing life, too. Live them without guilt.” - L.K. Madigan

77. “- I don't want to be a writer so I can write about my life. I want to be a writer to escape from it. + Then you shouldn't be a writer.” - Candace Bushnell

78. “You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.” - Gustave Flaubert

79. “Is imagination dependent upon experience, or is experience influenced by imagination?” - Anita Shreve

80. “Write to your fear.” - Dorothy Allison

81. “The two things I enjoy the most about writing are the first page of a book and the last. What's in between is very hard work.” - Rachel Gibson

82. “That is one thing I am sure of amid my many uncertainties regarding the literary vocation: deep inside, a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him, because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life, never mind the social, political, or financial rewards of what he might achieve through it.” - Mario Vargas Llosa

83. “A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.” - Albert Camus

84. “Writers were blessed stenographers taking divine dictation.” - Stephen King

85. “A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.” - Oscar Wilde

86. “It's possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things-- a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring-- with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader's spine-- the source of artistic delight, as Nabokov would have it. That's the kind of writing that most interests me.” - Raymond Carver

87. “Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you're being told.” - John Green

88. “Most of us have a soundtrack running in the background of our lives. I access that soundtrack when I write.” - Robin Helm

89. “In a way, “failure” is just another word for “the journey,” for not being there yet but on the way. It’s the road we walk on to get wherever it is we’re trying to go.” - Sara Zarr

90. “The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written.(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)” - Dorothy L. Sayers

91. “We're pupils of the religions—Catholic, Protestant, Jewish . . . Well, the Christian religions. Those who directed French education down through the centuries were the Jesuits. They taught us how to make sentences translated from the Latin, well balanced, with a verb, a subject, a complement, a rhythm. In short—here a speech, there a preach, everywhere a sermon! They say of an author, “He knits a nice sentence!” Me, I say, “It's unreadable.” They say, “What magnificent theatrical language!” I look, I listen. It's flat, it's nothing, it's nil. Me, I've slipped the spoken word into print. In one sole shot.” - Louis-Ferdinand Celine

92. “Stories. Character. Dialouge. Entire worlds created on the page. Worlds that could sweep you away or frighten you, make you laugh or cry. Worlds that allowed you to escape to another country or time. Worlds built piece by piece of ink and punctuation.” - Jamie Michaels

93. “I really didn't write it with any intention of being published. If I'd known that was going to happen, I would have written something more sensible, because now I have to dress up as a pirate for book signings... I would have done a novel about a man who hangs around with a gaggle of models.” - Gideon Defoe

94. “If I don't write it, they can't buy it.” - Connie Cox

95. “Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.” - Stephen King

96. “Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.” - Louise Brooks

97. “When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.” - Mark Twain

98. “Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts.” - Dan Brown

99. “The man is in his work,read it if you want to know about him.” - R.M. Engelhardt

100. “To Grandma,for being my first editor and giving me the best writing advice I’ve ever received: “Christopher, I think you should wait until you’re done with elementary school before worrying about being a failed writer.” - Chris Colfer

101. “I have completed and uncompleted screenplays, but they both fall into the category of “unsold.” I’ve seen quite a few movies where the screenplays seemed to be in the “uncompleted” category yet still got sold and made into movies, so I generally refer too all screenplays as “sold” or “unsold.” But that’s just my own filing system.” - Gary Reilly

102. “I don’t know why the publishers in New York don’t take a tip from Hollywood and just publish the outlines of novels rather than the completed books. Let the audience use their imaginations, as my Maw always says about radio. I would much prefer to read an outline of War and Peace than slog through eight hundred thousand words. Why do I need Tolstoy to describe snow? I can imagine snow, whether Russian snow or just regular snow. But book publishers seem to think that the authors should do all the work, and the readers should be waited on hand-and-foot like a buncha goddamn prima donnas.” - Gary Reilly

103. “Most of the ideas I’ve gotten for novels or screenplays have occurred to me while I was either shaving or taking a bath. A number have occurred to me while I was driving 127. I rarely get ideas when seated in front of my typewriter, which I find ironic because I have always suspected that typing somehow plays a key role in writing.” - Gary Reilly

104. “It’s a funny thing about writing. You get so balled up in a story idea that you lose your perspective and forget that human being might read your words someday.” - Gary Reilly

105. “The pen to a writer is like a cigarette to a smoker; they need it to take the edge off.” - Kellie Elmore

106. “Any writer who puts his words and thoughts out into the public is going to be criticized.” - Thomas Moore

107. “My reason for being an author? Because I love to write - it fulfills me. But the fact that I entertain others by doing it is a lovely bonus.” - Chasta Schneider

108. “Pay attention, and use your imagination.” - R.M. Engelhardt

109. “I have found that a writer is formed not so much by their experiences but by the way in which they view and capture those experiences.” - H Raven Rose

110. “I hope that I capture something in my work that is about the elusive, the magical and powerful and the transformative. The writing in itself is transformative for me.” - H Raven Rose

111. “Words are powerful. Words make a difference. They can create and destroy. They can open doors and close doors. Words can create illusion or magic, love or destruction. … All those things.” - R.M. Engelhardt

112. “For me the poem and the poetry open mic isn’t about competition and it never will be. Honestly? It's wrong. The open mic is about 1 poet, one fellow human being up on a stage or behind a podium sharing their work regardless of what form or style they bring to it. In other words? The guy with the low slam score is more than likely a far better poet-writer than the guy who actually won. But who are you? I ? Or really anyone else to judge them? The Poetry Slam has become an overgrown, over used monopoly on American literature and poetry and is now over utilized by the academic & public school establishments. And over the years has sadly become the "McDonalds Of Poetry". We can only hope that the same old stale atmosphere of it all eventually becomes or evolves into something new that translates to and from the written page and that gives new poets with different styles & authentic voices a chance to share their work too.” - R.M. Engelhardt

113. “Another drink, another sentence, and the writing continues on. . . .” - Dennis R. Miller