Writing has the power to inspire, transform, and connect us in profound ways. Whether you're a seasoned author or someone looking for a spark of motivation, the words of renowned writers can provide valuable encouragement and insight. In this post, we’ve gathered 120 of the most inspirational writer quotes to uplift your creativity and fuel your passion for storytelling.
1. “It is related that Sakyamuni [the historical Buddha] once dismissed as of small consequence a feat of levitation on the part of a disciple, and cried out in pity for a yogin by the river who had spent twenty years of his human existence learning to walk on water, when the ferryman might have taken him across for a small coin.” - Peter Matthiessen
2. “Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose.” - Oscar Wilde
3. “A writer always writes.” - Don Roff
4. “You have the power to heal your life, and you need to know that. We think so often that we are helpless, but we're not. We always have the power of our minds…Claim and consciously use your power.” - LOUISE L. HAY
5. “A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.” - Karl Kraus
6. “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” - Carl Sagan
7. “You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.” - Anne Lamott
8. “You sure about this writer thing son?” - Christopher Moore
9. “She doesn't understand that a writer is a special creature--that I'm different from everyone else. I'm not saying I'm superior to other people, just more sensitive, I guess.” - Christopher Moore
10. “He was a writer and words were his weapons.” - Christopher Moore
11. “We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.” - Dorianne Laux
12. “The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more.” - Alberto Manguel
13. “Writing is the only art form where a good number of the artists make a slice of their living criticizing one another in print, in public. ” - Christian Bauman
14. “To be a writer you have to write -- and no academic degree is going to do the writing for you. ” - Michelle Richmond
15. “Writing is hard work, and if anything's true about the process, it's that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What's less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I've changed the cat little because I didn't know what my characters were going to say next.” - Adam Johnson
16. “The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer's sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.” - Adam Johnson
17. “There are some catastrophes that a poor writer's pen cannot describe and which he is obliged to leave to the imagination of his readers with a bald statement of the facts.” - Alexandre Dumas
18. “Do you drink?""Of course,I just said I was a writer.” - Stephen King
19. “A writer, like a sheriff, is the embodiment of a group of people and without their support both are in a tight spot.” - Craig Johnson
20. “I am not a slow writer, I am not a fast writer . . . I am a half-fast writer.” - Robert Asprin
21. “I fix the cramped, lined pageswith my curious stare. How do youcome to exist?” - Kiera Woodhull
22. “To make this world a whole lot brighter,when I grow up I'll be a writer.” - Lee Bennett Hopkins
23. “Who is better off? The one who writes to revel in the voluptuousness of the life that surrounds them? Or the one who writes to escape the tediousness of that which awaits them outside? Whose flame will last longer?” - Roman Payne
24. “All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.” - Samuel Beckett
25. “The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer consists in giving them the faculty to adapt themselves to that - not very appetizing - food and thrive on it, sometimes for centuries.” - Vladimir Nabokov
26. “There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it's why you want to become a writer — because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it.” - Tobias Wolff
27. “I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.” - Carl Sandburg
28. “Sometimes writing everyday is like pulling teeth, painful, but necessary.” - Wendy Swore
29. “A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest. If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not interested or even involved.” - Jack Kerouac
30. “You see, unlike most writers today, I do not use a computer. I write the old-fashioned way: on the walls of caves.” - Cuthbert Soup
31. “Come writers and criticsWho prophesize with your penAnd keep your eyes wideThe chance won't come againAnd don't speak too soonFor the wheel's still in spinAnd there's no tellin' whoThat it's namin'For the loser nowWill be later to winFor the times they are a-changin'.” - Bob Dylan
32. “This is what drives a young writer out of his head, this feeling that nothing is being said.” - William Saroyan
33. “If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!” - Jackie Collins
34. “I dont write books so that you can be fascinated with me. I write them so you can be fascinated with YOU!” - Steve Maraboli
35. “I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar - if he is financially fortunate.” - John Steinbeck
36. “For when I trace back the years I have liv'd, gathering them up in my Memory, I see what a chequer'd Work Of Nature my life has been. If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Sufferings and surprizing Adventures (as the Booksellers might indite it), I know that the great Part of the World would not believe the Passages there related, by reason of the Strangeness of them, but I cannot help their Unbelief; and if the Reader considers them to be but dark Conceits, then let him bethink himself that Humane life is quite out of the Light and that we are all Creatures of Darknesse.” - Peter Ackroyd
37. “I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do---the actual act of writing---turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.” - Anne Lamott
38. “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
39. “The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.” - Henry Adams
40. “Jika ingin menjadi seorang penulis pertama sekali kena membaca, kedua kena membaca, ketiga, membaca, keempat membaca dan kelima baru menulis.” - A. Samad Said
41. “Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist, except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice.” - Paul Auster
42. “Writer is always alone. But every author is a creator, and gods are lonely.” - Lara Biuts
43. “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
44. “Marriage can be made to work if both the partners can see beyond themselves and understand the limitations,needs and abilities of the other person and are willing to embrace the positive and negative aspects of each other in their understanding.But it never happens that way. We expect others to understand and comply with us while we fail to do the same.Thus marriage loses all it's sheen by the time the couple reaches middle age.” - Chitralekha Paul
45. “Writers do not have the privilege of sleep. There is always a story coming alive in their heads, constantly composing. Whether they choose it or not.” - Jamie Weise
46. “Ben hikâyeciyim diye sizlerden ayrı şeyler düşünecek değilim. Sizin düşündüklerinizden başka bir şey de düşünemem. O halde bu adamın hikâyesi ne olabilir? Sakın benden büyük vakalar beklemeyin, n'olur?” - Sait Faik Abasıyanık
47. “An inspirational writer's life is an open book that never shuts. Choose your words carefully.” - Shannon Alder
48. “Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the perfect deceiver of a man's true worth.” - Criss Jami
49. “The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.” - D.H. Lawrence
50. “نحن لا يمكن أن نجبر فناناً على أن يعمل بخلاف ما تمليه عليه طبيعته وإلا كنا نجبره على التصنع والتكلف، وهذا شر لا يمكن أن يؤذي الأدب والفن، والمسألة في غاية البساطة مع ذلك، فإذا كنا نتيح للفنان حريته كاملة، فنحن أيضاً أحرار في تقييمنا للأعمال الفنية، فلا نمنح تقديرنا إلا لمن يقدم لنا العمل الفني الكامل، وهو العمل الفني الرفيع فنياً النافع إنسانياً واجتماعياً” - توفيق الحكيم
51. “If you live with dogs, you'll never run out of things to write about.” - Sharon Delarose
52. “...Love can give you the most exhilarating wonderful highs at times... ...Then there will be dives that will take all you have just to hold on... Quote on the Title Page of "Love TORN Asunder” - Elizabeth Funderbirk
53. “Though this child came in with nothing but excess baby fat, chemical brain waves, and mother and son bodily toxins on his legs, he had a fate fit for a modern day demigod.” - David Scheier
54. “Miss, I'd gladly pay you to remove your clothes.” - David Scheier
55. “As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers, so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.” - Cyril Connolly
56. “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
57. “The writer of fiction is not a scholar but an artist impacted emotionally by characters from life, who then strives to present these in his works. These characters present us with human truth but do not necessarily represent social truth.” - Alaa Al Aswany
58. “A critic is a legless man who teaches other people to run” - Channing Pollock
59. “A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.” - Leo Tolstoy
60. “No writer has an imaginative power richer than what the streets offer.” - Mehmet Murat ildan
61. “I write so the endangered thoughts roaming naked and vulnerable through the misty jungles of my mind aren't slain by the guns of practical living.” - Kim Krizan
62. “Writing nonfiction means I tell people's stories for them, not because they're special but because we all are.” - Jo Deurbrouck
63. “If Laura was so prolific with poems, and in truth she was, then what was the problem with Megan’s request? Couldn’t Laura, with a little doing, keep stringing together line after line of words and construct, in time, a novel? It seemed logical, but there was the matter of finding an idea and sustaining it. Only fire could do that. The fire of rebellion.Mario Vargas Llosa had not used the term “fire” exactly, but rather had discussed the presence of “seditious roots” that could “dynamite the world” the writer inhabited. He claimed that writing stories was an exercise in freedom and quarreling—out-and-out rebellion, whether or not the writer was conscious of it. And this rebellion, Vargas Llosa reminded his readers, was why the Spanish Inquisition had strictly censored works of fiction, prohibiting them for three hundred years in the American colonies.” - L.L. Barkat
64. “In The End The Words Are The All And The Nothing.” - R.M. Engelhardt
65. “I'm an alien in my own world, a writer without words, a musician without a piano, a magician without a wand. I am fooled by infinite words that rush in my blood, yet imprisoned by the very thoughts of silence. I'm a gray green fallow leaf on trees and abandoned on the streets, a never-ending spring season and an eternal autumn. I'm the golden of the sun and the silver of the moon, the fog of dawn and the amber of dusk. I'm the white and the red flag , the obedient and the rebel. I am the coward in the brave, and the child in the man. I am, but a writer.” - Nema Al-Araby
66. “...when you're a writer, you become deeper and more uniquely distinct, the more you go inside yourself...” - John Geddes
67. “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
68. “There is no good or bad author; there is only one kind of an author, that who connects with the readers.” - Saru Singhal
69. “I am so happy that I made someone cry today - don't worry I'm a writer. It's when they make me cry that it's a problem.” - Tina Smith
70. “Writing consist of everything. whether your writing is of riddles, rimes, prose, trivial, general, of thought, or of feeling. indiscretions you've done or have fantasized about. love, deception, romance, fear, death, life, pain, & yes even happiness. writing is of a specific purpose & states a meaning within what is written.” - Michael Stuckey
71. “Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much", a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral.Or maybe there's another word for such people: thinkers.” - Susan Cain
72. “I write because I love it, not because I excel at it. But because I write, I shall slowly excel at it.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
73. “You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.” - Paul Simon
74. “Any writer who puts his words and thoughts out into the public is going to be criticized.” - Thomas Moore
75. “Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.” - Richard Siken
76. “And so I just kept writing to myself.” - Kimberly Novosel
77. “I wrote. I wrote all the things I couldn’t say to him. I wrote about how much I believed in us. I wrote about how much I trusted God. I wrote that I was praying for him. I wrote down all the jokes I could remember, which weren’t many.” - Kimberly Novosel
78. “I wasn't that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn't write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I never thought I was that good at all. All that I thought was that I tried to tell the truth.” - Cornell Woolrich
79. “What a writer brought to a book didn't matter as much as what the reader contributed.” - Lisa Morton
80. “A daydreamer is a writer just waiting for pen and paper.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
81. “The serious writer was aware of a paradox at the heart of his art: his inner world, the place of the strongest stories, was infinite, but it was also embedded in – if this was possible! – an even more infinite universe of all things to write about. It was like seeing the Grand Canyon from outer space – a huge gorge that looked like a thin trickle, impossible to miss, hard to hit.” - Marcus Speh
82. “The greatest artists express their inner self; an artist paints her rage; a writer pens his fear; a dancer expresses her sadness through movement; and a musician's loneliness echoes in his performance.” - Gerard de Marigny
83. “...writing surrounds us: it's not something we do just in school or on the job but something that is as familiar and everyday as a pair of worn sneakers or the air we breathe.” - Andrea A. Lunsford
84. “Sometimes you can write about a character's day in under a minute and sometimes it takes a day just to write about a minute.” - Jennifer v Clancy
85. “I may not be able to say these words to you but that doesn't mean I can't say it to the rest of the world. I'm not a poet. Nor do I try to be one. I simply share what I do in my spare time. All poetry springs from genuine feelings. I'm only a woman expressing herself to the world.” - Tammy-Louise Wilkins
86. “I have always noticed that these artists and writers are very unbalanced” - Agatha Christie
87. “You know that you are a writer if you are imaginative. You know that you are a writer if you are curious. You know that you are a writer if you are interested in the things and people of the world. You know that you are a writer if you hold a minie ball in your hand and wonder about its story. You know that you are a writer if you like the sound of rain on the roof. And if you want to tell someone else about your heart and how waiting for the thunder sometimes makes you feel, if you work to find the words to do that, then you are a writer. --Maureen O'Toople in the short story "Your Question for Author Here” - Jon Scieszka Katie DiCamillo
88. “...each person is required to ask, 'what is my authority?' - on what do you base your decisions? if it's yourself, then you are without excuse...” - John Geddes
89. “I am a writer, I'm supposed to be intense and emotional,” - Natasha Duncan-Drake
90. “...you fantasize about me reading my poems to you - it doesn't work that way - I write down everything later - living is not an after-thought...” - John Geddes
91. “...the making of stories is only one part of my craft -mainly, I'm a heart whisperer...” - John Geddes
92. “...if you've got writer's block, you aren't empty - maybe it's just like Twitter - overwhelmed, and loading seems to be taking a while...” - John Geddes
93. “You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, 'This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I'm doing the best I can - buy me or not - but this is who I am as a writer.” - David Morrell
94. “My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.” - William S. Burroughs
95. “Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don't forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.” - Paula Danziger
96. “On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.” - Annie Dillard
97. “Don't quit. It's very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it's very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can't get fired if you don't write, and most of the time you don't get rewarded if you do. But don't quit.” - Andre Dubus
98. “Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don't want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.” - James Michener
99. “It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.” - Flannery O'Connor
100. “A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, "Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought." To finish is sadness to a writer, a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.” - John Steinbeck
101. “A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.” - Anthony Trollopel
102. “Life's too short, drive it like ya stole it!” - Debra L. Hartmann
103. “The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years.” - George Orwell
104. “The viewpoint character in each story is usually someone trapped in a living nightmare, but this doesn't guarantee that we and the protagonist are at one. In fact Woolrich often makes us pull away from the person at the center of the storm, splitting our reaction in two, stripping his protagonist of moral authority, denying us the luxury of unequivocal identification, drawing characters so psychologically warped and sometimes so despicable that a part of us wants to see them suffer. Woolrich also denies us the luxury of total disidentification with all sorts of sociopaths, especially those who wear badges. His Noir Cop tales are crammed with acts of police sadism, casually committed or at least endorsed by the detective protagonist. These monstrosities are explicitly condemned almost never and the moral outrage we feel has no internal support in the stories except the objective horror of what is shown, so that one might almost believe that a part of Woolrich wants us to enjoy the spectacles. If so, it's yet another instance of how his most powerful novels and stories are divided against themselves so as to evoke in us a divided response that mirrors his own self-division.("Introduction")” - Francis M. Nevins
105. “Making love to me is amazing. Wait, I meant: making love, to me, is amazing. The absence of two little commas nearly transformed me into a sex god. ” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo
106. “I realize that a writer's business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed-and trying to save him-again and again; forever.” - John Irving
107. “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
108. “Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to slip inside a story and stop being recognizable, controllable, subject to blackmail.” - Fabrizio De André
109. “Like a father with his daughter, the writist plays peek-a-boo with the world. His aim is to evoke that sweet smile, the one that says "i remember you. I am glad you are here again".” - D.A. Botta
110. “I haven't written in a week. It's like holding your breath under water. You feel an awful constriction and then the instinct to propel yourself.” - D.A. Botta
111. “To write what you think is to think what you write. Leave those of hollow to their dust. They are but sorry things.” - D.A. Botta
112. “The trouble with a baby, for writists, is that they take away your useful melancholy, even the energy to invent some.” - D.A. Botta
113. “I never said you were supposed to be a jailer, i only said a normal person would have questioned why someone would create a decoy nun and then crawl out the window.” - Janette Rallison
114. “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
115. “The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, with lots of groaning.” - David Mitchell
116. “Don't say you're a writer if you're not writing. Even if you're writing, don't call yourself a writer. Say instead, 'I write.' It's the verb that's important, not the noun.” - Patti Digh
117. “Sento ancora la follia scorrermi dentro, ma ancora non ho scritto le parole che avrei voluto, la tigre mi è rimasta sulla schiena. Morirò con addosso quella figlia di puttana, ma almeno le ho dato battaglia. E se fra voi c'è qualcuno che si sente abbastanza matto da voler diventare scrittore, gli consiglio va' avanti, sputa in un occhio al sole, schiaccia quei tasti, è la migliore pazzia che possa esserci, i secoli chiedono aiuto, la specie aspira spasmodicamente alla luce, e all'azzardo e alle risate. Regalateglieli. Ci sono abbastanza parole per noi tutti.” - Charles Bukowski
118. “My wish has always been to write my own story, to create a life that’s worth writing about. But is a story worth anything at all if I have no one to tell it to?” - Charlotte Eriksson
119. “All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality.” - Charlotte Eriksson
120. “I want my life to be the greatest story. My very existence will be the greatest poem.Watch me burn.Love always, Charlotte” - Charlotte Eriksson
