47 Inspiring Writing Quotes

Writing has long been a powerful tool for expression, creativity, and communication. It serves as a bridge between thoughts and words, crafting stories that can inspire, provoke, and enlighten. Embarking on the writing journey often requires a spark of inspiration, a gentle nudge towards creativity that can transform a fleeting idea into a masterpiece. To kindle that creative spark, we've gathered a curated collection of the top 47 inspiring writing quotes. These words of wisdom, from some of the greatest minds in literature, serve as a testament to the transformative power of the written word. Dive in and find the motivation you need to fill your pages with compelling narratives and striking prose.

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. “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

4. “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

5. “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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

14. “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

15. “Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.” - Philip Pullman

16. “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

17. “I’m not particularly keen on writing which exhaustively describes the physical characteristics of the people in the story and what they’re wearing… I can always get a J. Crew catalogue… …So spare me, if you please, the hero’s ‘sharply intelligent blue eyes’ and ‘outthrust determined chin’.” - Stephen King

18. “Writing is one of the few careers for which you essentially train yourself, the other two major ones being juggling and pickpocketing.” - Maureen Johnson

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

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

21. “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

22. “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

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

24. “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

25. “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

26. “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

27. “The free-lance writer is one who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.” - Robert Benchley

28. “- 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

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

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

31. “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

32. “Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.” - Stephen King

33. “I'd love to write some porn, but I don't know if I have the right engines. When I was a young man and I was tempted to write porn, imaginary parents would appear over my shoulder and read what I was writing; just about the point that I managed to banish the imaginary parents, real children would lean over my shoulder and read what I was writing.” - Neil Gaiman

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

35. “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

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

37. “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

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

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

40. “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

41. “I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.” - Stephen King

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

43. “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

44. “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

45. “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

46. “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

47. “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