63 Quotes By Famous Writers

Words have an unparalleled power to evoke emotion, inspire action, and provide solace. From compelling narratives to thought-provoking prose, writers have the unique ability to capture the human experience in a way that resonates across time and space. In this post, we celebrate that literary gift by diving into a curated collection of the top 63 quotes by famous writers. Whether you’re seeking inspiration, motivation, or a moment of reflection, these timeless quotes offer profound insights and enduring wisdom from some of the greatest minds in literature.

1. “I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W. B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now, my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, ‘It’s a lie!’ So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had.” - Samuel Beckett

2. “A writer always writes.” - Don Roff

3. “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” - Carl Sagan

4. “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

5. “You can write nothing of value unless you give yourself wholly to the the theme -- and when you so give yourself -- you lose appetite ans sleep -- it cannot be helped --” - Charlotte Brontë

6. “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

7. “Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument. Am I writing well? Thank my pen. Am I writing badly? Don't blame me blame my pen. By such displacements does the fearful imagination defend itself.” - Anne Fadiman

8. “I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in.” - Sylvia Plath

9. “To be a writer you have to write -- and no academic degree is going to do the writing for you. ” - Michelle Richmond

10. “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

11. “Do you drink?""Of course,I just said I was a writer.” - Stephen King

12. “The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.” - Samuel Beckett

13. “I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.” - Carl Sandburg

14. “Sometimes writing everyday is like pulling teeth, painful, but necessary.” - Wendy Swore

15. “The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.” - Henry Green

16. “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

17. “When you write about what you dream, you become a writer.When you dream about what you write, you become haunted by a curse.” - Amal Saleh

18. “If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!” - Jackie Collins

19. “But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?" You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind -- a scene, a locale, a character, whatever -- and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind.” - Anne Lamott

20. “It's strange, isn't it. You stand in the middle of a library and go 'aaaaagghhhh' and everyone just stares at you. But you do the same thing on an aeroplane, and everyone joins in.” - Tommy Cooper

21. “We as authors sign a pact with our readers; they'll go on reading because they trust us to play fair with them and deliver what we've promised.” - Pamela Glass Kelly

22. “Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art."(Last words, according to Dickens's obituary in The Times.)” - Charles Dickens

23. “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

24. “Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.” - Criss Jami

25. “Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.” - Mikhail Bulgakov

26. “I haven’t had writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly.” - Jennifer Egan

27. “...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

28. “A professional man of letters, especially if he is much at war with unscrupulous enenemies, is naturally jealous of his privacy... so it was, I think, with Dryden.” - Raleigh, Sir Walter

29. “But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.” - Edward Abbey

30. “No book can be written till it wants to be written, till it shouts to be written, and raises up a persistent din in the writer's head. And then, if you want peace, you just have to pull it out and freeze it in print. Nothing less would do.” - Jyoti Arora

31. “Naturally, this country can't stand truth.” - Lewis H. Michaux

32. “A critic is a legless man who teaches other people to run” - Channing Pollock

33. “If you're a writer, the answer to everything is yes.” - Nikki Giovanni

34. “All you have to do is put one word after another, and remember how great it feels to be a writer.” - Stephanie Lennox

35. “A writer's age at the time of a work's composition is never irrelevant.” - Margaret Atwood

36. “No writer has an imaginative power richer than what the streets offer.” - Mehmet Murat ildan

37. “I was, a near grown man, sat in his dank, dark and rickety digs, feverishly hovering about the glare of a computer screen like a disorientated moth, one searching for a flaming light of recognition from someone/anyone!” - Tom Conrad

38. “In The End The Words Are The All And The Nothing.” - R.M. Engelhardt

39. “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

40. “Only the mediocre artist is always at his best.” - Victor J. Banis

41. “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

42. “The best part about being a writer is getting the last word.” - Shannon L. Alder

43. “And so I just kept writing to myself.” - Kimberly Novosel

44. “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

45. “It isn't dying I'm afraid of, it isn't that at all; I know what it is to die, I've died already. It is the endless obliteration, the knowledge that there will never be anything else. That's what I can't stand, to try so hard and to end in nothing. You know what I mean, don't you? ... I really loved to write.” - Cornell Woolrich

46. “A daydreamer is a writer just waiting for pen and paper.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

47. “...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

48. “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

49. “Advice from a Romance Writer: Guys, make your woman feel pretty even on an 'off' day. Trust me, good things will come of it.” - Michelle M. Pillow

50. “A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.” - Roman Payne

51. “You can be a member of all of the romance writers associations, take part in all of the networking available, or win the latest romance award... but guess what? None of that makes a difference if you don't WRITE something people want to READ. The greatest editor in the world won't make your book a best seller if it isn't something people care about. So forget all of the fluff that clouds your purpose... writing!!” - Kathryn Le Veque

52. “If you can write; then you are a writer - Rayvon L Browne” - Rayvon L. Browne

53. “...what makes a writer a prophet is his ability to speak truth...” - John Geddes

54. “A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.” - Alain De Botton

55. “...If I ever got sloppy and maudlin, it would be for the streets of my childhood—but no self- respecting writer should ever eulogize a slum...” - John Geddes

56. “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

57. “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

58. “It is an awesome tragedy in this life that, when asking what a person is and they reply doctor or lawyer or engineer, we don't say "Well thats a nice little hobby, but why don't you take up writing or painting or music?” - D.A. Botta

59. “The trouble with a baby, for writists, is that they take away your useful melancholy, even the energy to invent some.” - D.A. Botta

60. “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

61. “Never give up. Never. Ever. Ever.” - Nancy Hendrickson

62. “You can be a writer who doesn't read everyday. But you're not fooling anyone. It shows, rather embarrassingly, in your work.” - Don Roff

63. “...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.” - Steven Pressfield