38 Heartfelt Writing Quotes

In the realm of writing, words have the power to move hearts and stir emotions, transcending boundaries and connecting souls. Whether you're a novice writer or a seasoned wordsmith, drawing inspiration from the wisdom of those who have mastered the art is a timeless treasure. Our carefully curated collection of the top 38 heartfelt writing quotes serves as a beacon of creativity and motivation, offering insights that resonate with the core essence of storytelling. Immerse yourself in these nuggets of wisdom, and let them ignite your passion as you embark on your own literary journey.

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

2. “I speak to the paper, as I speak to the first person I meet.” - Michel de Montaigne

3. “Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say. ~Sharon O'Brien” - Sharon O'Brien

4. “Stories are the collective wisdom of everyone who has ever lived. Your job as a storyteller is not simply to entertain. Nor is it to be noticed for the way you turn a phrase. You have a very important job--one of the most important. Your job is to let people know that everyone shares their feelings--and that these feelings bind us. Your job is a healing art, and like all healers, you have a responsibility. Let people know they are not alone. You must make people understand that we are all the same.” - Brian McDonald

5. “..kau harus memperlakukan kegiatan menulismu sebagai sebuah karier. Kau tidak boleh membicarakannya. Kau harus melakukannya-ingin melakukannya, suka melakukannya walaupun harus kesepian, merasa bahwa di bumi tidak ada yang lebih penting ketika kau sedang melakukannya.” - Irving Wallace

6. “Don’t write what you know—what you know may bore you, and thus bore your readers. Write about what interests you—and interests you deeply—and your readers will catch fire at your words.” - Valerie Sherwood

7. “You will have a story in there. . . or a character, a place, a poem, a moment in time. When you find it, you will write it. Word after word after word after word.” - Patricia MacLachlan

8. “I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.” - Koren Zailckas

9. “Writers are like supreme beings. We can create worlds in a matter of days and we can destroy them just as fast.” - Linda Nelson

10. “I write to be a part of something - a world made up of words and ideas, which are sometimes painfully criticized, gratefully loved and can never be destroyed.” - Ashley Sanders

11. “Try as we might, we write what we write” - bg Thurston

12. “I can't write to please everyone, but someone, somewhere will be touched if I put my heart into it.” - Sara Winters

13. “Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.” - Red Haircrow

14. “Fiction gives us a reach into the lives of individuals that would otherwise be but a closed door. If we are gifted with a desire to tell tales, then we should tell them . . . if only to reach but a few.” - James D. Maxon

15. “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

16. “I eat, breath and sleep and that makes me like everyone else. When I write, I become something much greater than flesh & bone; something that will stay behind long after that part of me is gone. Writing makes me special, readers make me everlasting.” - CK Webb

17. “I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!” - Roman Payne

18. “Personal accounts flow from the heart and tend to be the most difficult to write. It's nearly impossible to remove the emotional undertones, and it takes so much courage to open those pages to everyone else.” - Javier A. Robayo

19. “The only difference between him and a lion is that a lion does not laugh.” - Ken Macrorie

20. “The chair in the police station was uncomfortable and I couldn’t sit in it. It was a cheap looking chair in a cheap looking room meant for people who are wrong.” - Ken Macrorie

21. “Just now they kissed, with India coming up close on her toes to see if she could tell yet what there was about a kiss.” - Eudora Weltly

22. “At the last moment, Antoinette came out of her faint and shouted one word to her child.That word, reader, was adieu...Adieu is the French word for farewell. “Farewell” is not the word you would like to hear from your mother as you are being led to the dungeon by two oversize mice in black hoods... “Farewell” is a word that, in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing.” - kate dicamillo

23. “They lived happily ever after. It said so. In the book. They were the last words on the page. Happily ever after. Despereaux was sure that he had read exactly those words time and time again.Lying on the floor with the drum beating and the mice shouting... Despereaux had a sudden, chilling thought: Had some other mouse eaten the words that spoke the truth? Did the knight and the fair maiden really not live happily ever after?” - kate dicamillo

24. “Submitting to history allows us to remember our society’s past. Although writing and art express history, it's our humanity which keeps all of us striving for an improved future.” - K.P. Kollenborn

25. “...the secret to writing is to get your own pain - shout it out till it hurts your throat - weep it into your pillow - then write it down ...” - John Geddes

26. “The formula for a great story includes both the ups and downs of life.” - Lisa Potocar

27. “Where do storytellers find the wisdom to discover their own stories? From no place more mysterious than their own hearts.” - Marion Dane Bauer

28. “I understand now that a Trojan of literary achievement writes out of passion, out of necessity.” - Merce Cardus

29. “There is a ruthlessness to the creative act. It often involves a betrayal of the status quo.” - Alan Watt

30. “I can't wait to get back to writing today so I can see what happens next Kim Cormack” - Kim Cormack

31. “I have wrought my simple planIf I give one hour of joyTo the boy who’s half a man,Or the man who’s half a boy.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

32. “ I also know that not everyone will like what I do, and that there are many people who do love my work, and so I write for them, and for my own pleasure, and try not to brood too much over those who have different tastes. And I have written enough books now that I know the self-doubt and the anxiety are part of the creative process, and drive me to keep trying to do better, and keep me from becoming too cocksure about my writing, which is a form of creative death.” - Kate Forsyth

33. “The whole point about vision is that it's very individual, it's very personal, and it has to be confessional. It has to be something which hurts - the pulling out of it and putting it on the page hurts. Art can be about the individual writer's response to his or her condition, and if that response comes out of a predigested belief about what the audience wants to hear about the writer's condition, then it has no truth, it has no validity. You either write with your own blood or nobody's. Otherwise it's just ink.” - Clive Barker

34. “Sometimes a story catches your imagination so much it has to be told. That is what I love about writing. It lets the images in your mind burst forth into words drawing a vivid picture that takes you away on a journey that would otherwise be impossible.” - S.E. Smith

35. “What happened was that sometimes I was, from a young age, put in the theater to watch movies because they kept me quiet and they kept me entertained, and they got me out from under the feet of my parents. So from a very early age, I went to the movies and I soon grew to prefer the life of the movies to my own life. The reality that the movies offered was preferable to the reality that I was experiencing. I became a child movie addict. I would go in with great pleasure and I'd never look at what was playing -- what was playing was unimportant. The fact was that I was entering a new world, an environment where not only was it much more attractive than my life was ordinarily, but also I could manipulate it to an extent by coming and going, and by looking at scenes or not, which I could not in my own life. I was subjected to my own domestic life. But I discovered a kind of power at the movies.” - Donald Richie

36. “I want to make you laugh or cry when you read a story . . .or do both at the same time. I want your heart, in other words. If you want to learn something, go to school.” - Stephen King

37. “I am broken the way most writers are, stories leaking through the cracks.” - Victoria Schwab

38. “Indentations on the page, words, my friends, and I will share them with you.” - Victoria Sawyer