39 Inspiring Writing Advice Quotes

Writing is both an art and a craft, a delicate balance of creativity and discipline. Whether you're an aspiring novelist, a seasoned journalist, or a passionate blogger, everyone experiences moments when inspiration wanes or motivation dwindles. When these inevitable challenges arise, a few words of wisdom from those who have walked the literary path before can reignite your creative spark. In this collection of 39 inspiring writing advice quotes, you'll find guidance, encouragement, and motivation from some of the most celebrated authors and thinkers. Let these insights illuminate your writing journey and remind you of the power and magic of words.

1. “Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.” - C.S. Lewis

2. “Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.” - Harper Lee

3. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” - Ernest Hemingway

4. “Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.” - Anne Lamott

5. “As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.” - Ernest Hemingway

6. “A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.” - Edgar Allan Poe

7. “I have a great many opinions about writing, but I'm afraid that all of them are unprintable” - Alfred Lansing

8. “it's been my experience that most writers don't talk about their craft--they just do it” - Alfred Lansing

9. “Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.” - Terry Pratchett

10. “Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that - but you are the only you.Tarantino - you can criticize everything that Quentin does - but nobody writes Tarantino stuff like Tarantino. He is the best Tarantino writer there is, and that was actually the thing that people responded to - they’re going ‘this is an individual writing with his own point of view’.There are better writers than me out there, there are smarter writers, there are people who can plot better - there are all those kinds of things, but there’s nobody who can write a Neil Gaiman story like I can.” - Neil Gaiman

11. “No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.” - Erin Bow

12. “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” - Raymond Chandler

13. “Get down, get naked, get savage.” - Ron Carlson

14. “Only something extremely dire and disabling will ever stop a real writer from writing. Retirement is never an option.” - Warren Adler

15. “The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can’t, you’re dead” - Warren Adler

16. “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” - Neil Gaiman

17. “Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:"Fool!" said my muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write.” - Philip Sidney

18. “Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must WriteRule Two: Finish What Your StartRule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial OrderRule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the MarketRule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold” - Robert A. Heinlein

19. “Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story … to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all.” - Stephen King - On Writing

20. “. . . But then you will want to put that {publication} behind you right away. You will want to recover the obscurity you swim best through. You've got eternal youth there. You'll never be satisfied. If you get lucky, it will be a darkness so pure it will mirror not the 'self,' but the mysterious 'other.” - Louis B. Jones

21. “Writing a book is a blood sport. If it doesn't hurt when you're done, you're probably doing something wrong.” - Kevis Hendrickson

22. “Keep working. Keep trying. Keep believing. You still might not make it, but at least you gave it your best shot. If you don’t have calluses on your soul, this isn’t for you. Take up knitting instead.” - David Eddings

23. “...some writers closet themselves - I write wherever I am because that's where life is happening ...” - John Geddes

24. “Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.” - Kurt Vonnegut

25. “Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature— at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it comes— is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune.” - Lewis Carroll

26. “...a writer should not so much write as embroider on paper; the work should be painstaking, laborious.” - Anton Chekhov

27. “Tell your story. Don't try and tell the stories that other people can tell. Any starting writer starts out with other people's voices. But as quickly as you can start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there will always be better writers than you and there will always be smarter writers than you, but you are the only you.” - Neil Gaiman

28. “Bastam poucas palavras para escrever uma história e apenas uma pessoa para a ler.” - Fernando Guerreiro

29. “...kapag binisita ka ng idea, gana o inspirasyon, kailangan mong itigil LAHAT ng ginagawa mo para lang di masayang ang pagkakataon. Walang “sandali lang” o “teka muna”. Dahil pag lumagpas ang maikling panahong yon, kahit mag-umpog ka ng ulo sa pader mahihirapan ka nang maghabol.” - Bob Ong

30. “...authority is the unmistakeable tone in the voice of a true writer...” - John Geddes

31. “...people quote proverbs without realizing they're really in awe of the authority of their truth and the power of their expression...” - John Geddes

32. “Don’t start right off writing the ‘Great American Novel’, that's too much pressure and you'll get disappointed; start with porn, it’s fun and a good way to get your feet wet.” - scavola

33. “There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.” - Samuel Beckett

34. “If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You’re a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.” - Richard Rhodes

35. “Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.” - Henry Fowler

36. “Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek, the Fox would say, "Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that is the whole art and joy of words." A glib saying.” - C.S. Lewis

37. “An author needs a lot more than one person to succumb to his literary seductive charms, but, like Saul, he must realize that he doesn't have to--and indeed cannot--capture the hearts of every possible reader out there. No matter who the writer, his ideal intended audience is only a small faction of all the living readers. Name the most widely read authors you can think of--from Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens to Robert Waller, Stephen King, and J.K. Rowling--and the immense majority of book-buyers out there actively decline to read them.” - Thomas McCormack

38. “Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies.” - Deana J. Driver

39. “Let us not neglect the forbidden. Let us not sophisticate ourselves out of the cheap thrill and chill of it: the story told for perversity's sake, and all the better for that; the image created because an artist gets tired of reasons sometimes, and wants to dredge up some picture he's been haunted by, and parade it like a new tattoo. I go with it, readily.” - Clive Barker