88 Inspiring Quotes On Writing

Writing is a journey that requires not only skill but also inspiration and motivation to continually explore new ideas and express them creatively. Whether you are a seasoned writer or just beginning to discover the beauty of crafting words, moments of inspiration can spark innovative thoughts and propel your storytelling to new heights. To nurture this creative spirit, we've gathered 88 compelling quotes from esteemed authors, poets, and creative thinkers who have articulated the essence and power of writing. These quotes serve as little beacons, offering wisdom, encouragement, and a gentle push to liberate your creativity and embrace the transformative impact of the written word. Dive into these inspiring thoughts and let them fuel your writing endeavors.

1. “I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.” - Eudora Welty

2. “Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.” - Marcel Proust

3. “I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.” - Hunter S. Thompson

4. “...but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood.” - Betsy Lerner

5. “Ink, a Drug.” - Vladimir Nabokov

6. “Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

7. “Writing is not a searching about in the daily experience for apt similes and pretty thoughts and images… It is not a conscious recording of the day’s experiences ‘freshly and with the appearance of reality’… The writer of imagination would find himself released from observing things for the purpose of writing them down later. He would be there to enjoy, to taste, to engage the free world, not a world which he carries like a bag of food, always fearful lest he drop something or someone get more than he.” - William Carlos Williams

8. “The first fact of the world is that it repeats itself. I had been taught to believe that the freshness of children lay in their capacity for wonder at the vividness and strangeness of the particular, but what is fresh in them is that they still experience the power of repetition, from which our first sense of the power of mastery comes. Though predictable is an ugly little world in daily life, in our first experience of it we are clued to the hope of a shapeliness in things. To see that power working on adults, you have to catch them out: the look of foolish happiness on the faces of people who have just sat down to dinner is their knowledge that dinner will be served. Probably, that is the psychological basis for the power and the necessity of artistic form...Maybe our first experience of form is the experience of our own formation...And I am not thinking mainly of poems about form; I’m thinking of the form of a poem, the shape of its understanding. The presence of that shaping constitutes the presence of poetry.” - Robert Hass

9. “The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” - Joan Didion

10. “In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.” - Junot Diaz

11. “Just me, my music, and the voices in my head.” - Christie Silvers

12. “Yang bisa kita lakukan sebagai penulis hanyalah mencoba, mengerahkan usaha, menabur benih, dan menuai panen apa pun yang diberikan dengan penuh sukacita dan syukur.” - Dan Millman

13. “People have many cruel expectations from writers. People expect novelists to live on a hill with three kids and a spouse, people expect children's story writers to never have sex, and people expect all great poets to be dead. And these are all very difficult expectations to fulfill, I think.” - C. JoyBell C.

14. “We writers constantly try to build up our own confidence by getting published, making sales, winning prizes, joining cliques or proclaiming theories. The passion to write constantly strips this vanity aside and forces us to confront that loneliness and the uncertainty with which human beings, in the end, live and die.” - Boria Sax

15. “I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how tobecome a professional writer. I say to you, "If you really want to hurt yourparents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you cando is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestitehermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you'vebeen to college.” - Kurt Vonnegut

16. “There's a difference between writing for a living and writing forlife. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises....If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest,not what pays” - Toni Morrison

17. “Writing, music, sculpting, painting, and prayer! These are the three things that are most closely related! Writers, musicians, sculptors, painters, and the faithful are the ones who make things out of nothing. Everybody else, they make things out of something, they have materials! But a written work can be done with nothing, it can begin in the soul! A musical piece begins with a harmony in the soul, a sculpture begins with a formless, useless piece of rock chiseled and formed and molded into the thing that was first conceived in the sculptor's heart! A painting can be carried inside the mind for a lifetime, before ever being put onto paper or canvass! And a prayer! A prayer is a thought, a remembrance, a whisper, a communion, that is from the soul going to what cannot be seen, yet it can move mountains! And so I believe that these five things are interrelated, these five kinds of people are kin.” - C. JoyBell C.

18. “A writer fails, not when a reader is not moved; but when, as a reader, the writer is not moved.” - Gerard de Marigny

19. “Murphy is a writer's best friend, but you have to keep an eye on him, or he'll steal the silver.” - Patricia C. Wrede

20. “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

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

22. “I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself "When did they live?" I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to live! My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations.” - C. JoyBell C.

23. “Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.” - A. Lee Martinez

24. “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

25. “You see, I believe that you cannot be taught to 'write.' You can be taught grammar and punctuation, but you cannot be taught to be a writer. That has to come from within.” - Robert J. Randisi

26. “It is my personal belief that writing cannot be taught.” - Parnell Hall

27. “Why do I love writing YA? Because I get a chance to re-live my youth knowing all I know now...” - Belle Whittington

28. “Capture your reader, let him not depart, from dull beginnings that refuse to start” - Horace

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

30. “I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.” - Francois Mauriac

31. “Writers have come to master nearly every trade. They are inventors and entrepreneurs of character, plot, and dialogue. They are the eager scientists that can’t wait to try out their new experiment. They are the maestros of the symphony that plays in their head, conducting what happens, where, and at what precise moment. They are engineers and architects that design the structure of their piece so it stands the test of time and continues to fire on all cylinders. They play mechanics and doctors in their revisions, hoping they prescribe the correct diagnosis to fix the piece’s 'boo boos'. They are salesmen who pitch not an idea or a product, but themselves, to editors, publishers, and more importantly, their readers. They are teachers who through their craft, preach to pupils about what works and what doesn’t work and why. Writers can make you feel, can make you think, can make you wonder, but they can also grab your hand and guide you through their maze. Similar to what Emerson stated in 'The Poet,' writers possess a unique view on life, and with their revolving eye, they attempt to encompass all. I am a writer.” - Garrett Dennert

32. “A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.” - Cyril Connolly

33. “Living is about capturing the essence of things. I go through my life every day with a vial, a vial wherein can be found precious essential oils of every kind! The priceless, fragrant oils that are the essence of my experiences, my thoughts. I walk inside a different realm from everybody else, in that I am existing in the essence of things; every time there is reason to smile, I hold out my glass vial and capture that drop of oil, that essence, and then I smile. And that is why I have smiled, and so you and I may be smiling at the same time but I am smiling because of that one drop of cherished, treasured oil that I have extracted. When I write, I find no need to memorize an idea, a plot, a sequence of things: no. I must only capture the essence of a feeling or a thought and once I have inhaled that aroma, I know that I have what I need.” - C. JoyBell C.

34. “Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.” - John Banville

35. “Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch.” - Lili St. Crow

36. “Don’t try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.” - Arthur Freed

37. “I should be writing ...” - Mur Lafferty

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

39. “Art is too often discounted as a secondary priority. The writer is necessary to society.” - Kayla Rae Whitaker

40. “Sooner or later every writer evolves his own definition of a story.Mine is: A reflection of life plus beginning and end (life seems not to have either) and a meaning.” - Mary O'Hara

41. “There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean – hell, I know that.” - Stephen King

42. “Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.” - Julia Cameron

43. “Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: "I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going.” - Virginia Woolf

44. “Dear Aspiring Writer, you are not ready. Stop. Put that finished story away and start another one. In a month, go back and look at the first story. RE-EDIT it. Then send it to a person you respect in the field who will be hard on you. Pray for many many many red marks. Fix them. Then put it away for two weeks. Work on something else. Finally, edit one last time. Now you are ready to sub your first work.Criticism is hard to take at first. Trust me, I've been there. But learn to think of crit marks as a knife. Each one is designed to cut away the bad and leave a scar. Scars prove you've lived, learned and walked away a winner. Any writer who tells you they don't need edits is lying. I don't care if they have 100 books out. Edits make you grow and if you aren't growing as a writer, you are dead.” - Inez Kelley

45. “I think the reason why I don't read so much, is because as I have observed, whole books all boil down to a drop of essence. You can read a book full of ten thousand words and at the end, sum it up in one sentence; I am more for the one sentence. I am more for the essence. It's like how you need a truckload of roses to extract one drop of rose oil; I don't want to bother with the truckload of roses because I would rather walk away with the drop of rose oil. So in my mind, I have written two hundred books. Why? Because I have with me two hundred vials with one drop of essence in each!” - C. JoyBell C.

46. “You may be a serious writer if ….10. your hard drive is littered with random notes and story ideas … but not nearly as littered as your head.9. you keep pen and paper next to your bed. And in the glove compartment. And in your gym bag. Also on the rim of the bathtub.8. a day without Roget’s Thesaurus is a day without sunshine.7. your emotional landscape includes creativity, confidence, elation, frustration, and the occasional neurosis.6. you’ve ever had to clean peanut butter and bread crumbs off your keyboard, because the work was going well, and you didn’t want to stop for lunch.5. grammar and punctuation turn you on.4. your interest in a new acquaintance is directly proportionate to his/her potential as a secondary character.3. you’ve worn the white e, r, s, and t clean off your keyboard.2. the search history on your web browser would raise red flags with the FBI, CIA, DEA, and mental health professionals everywhere.1. you have stories to tell, and you just. Keep. Telling. Them.” - Kathy Disanto

47. “Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have the explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is.” - Robert Hass Twentieth Century Pleasures Prose on Poetry

48. “My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.” - Karl Kraus

49. “The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple — to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.” - Craig Raine

50. “Writing nonfiction means I tell people's stories for them, not because they're special but because we all are.” - Jo Deurbrouck

51. “I believe that half the trouble in the world comes from people asking 'What have I achieved?' rather than 'What have I enjoyed?' I've been writing about a subject I love as long as I can remember--horses and the people associated with them, anyplace, anywhere, anytime. I couldn't be happier knowing that young people are reading my books. But even more important to me is that I've enjoyed so much the writing of them.” - Walter Farley

52. “Writers are like actors too. For every story we create, we must get under the skin of the characters and role play with our writing.” - Jyoti Arora

53. “... The Book is more important than your plans for it. You have to go with what works for The Book ~ if your ideas appear hollow or forced when they are put on paper, chop them, erase them, pulverise them and start again. Don't whine when things are not going your way, because they are going the right way for The Book, which is more important. The show must go on, and so must The Book.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

54. “You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.” - Paul Simon

55. “I live within my daydreams and nightmares; through that, I have learned to create, and I never cease from doing so.” - Shannon A Thompson

56. “The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is work.” - John Hughes

57. “True writers know that writing is not something they feel required to do,or to make a living they must do, it is quite frankly like breathing. Somecan breathe often and fluently, some short breaths, some a long exhaleand for many of us it is the patient steady breathing surrounding life.” - Milissa R. Bailey

58. “There is an audience for everything; our job as writers is to do the work and provide readers with a choice.” - Elizabeth Hernandez

59. “People approach writers, assuming we pull a perfect text out of our nose each time (well spelled). Spelling is the least of it.” - Sara Levine

60. “To sit down so often with nothing to say,-to say something so often, almost without consciousness of saying and without any remembrance or having said,-is a power of which I will not violate my modesty by boasting; but I do not believe everyone has it.” - Michael Kelahan

61. “Writing isn't difficult. Writing well is difficult. What is most difficult is being with the interior experience that manifests as resistance to writing.” - H Raven Rose

62. “Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your life, too, from bedtime stories you may have heard as a child to news stories you see on TV or read in a newspaper. We might even say that a major goal of living is to created the story of our own lives, a story we hope to take pleasure and pride in telling.” - Andrea A. Lunsford

63. “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

64. “The writing in itself is transformative for me.” - H Raven Rose

65. “The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.” - John Steinbeck

66. “Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.” - W.H. Auden

67. “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

68. “Write, write, write! Get your you-know-what in the chair and write more books: write the books of your heart and don’t let stress steal your joy.” - Sarra Cannon

69. “Memory is the mother of the muses, prototype Artist. As a rule picks and highlights what is important, omitting what is accidental or trivial. Occasionally, however, is mistaken as all the other artists. Nevertheless it is what I take as a guide page.” - Frank Harris

70. “Write like a motherfucker.” - Cheryl Strayed

71. “If a book falls in the woods and nobody read it, was it ever written?” - Neil Leckman

72. “I consider whoever my words land on to be my target, that’s why I like flash fiction, it’s a lot like using a shotgun.” - Neil Leckman

73. “Because here’s the thing: No matter how much one tells stories of magical beasts or impossible worlds, in the end, it is always the world of here and now one is writing about. The better one understands that world, the more powerful the stories will be.” - Steven Brust

74. “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

75. “...I have this one nasty habit. Makes me hard to live with. I write......writing is antisocial. It's as solitary as masturbation. Disturb a writer when he is in the throes of creation and he is likely to turn and bite right to the bone... and not even know that he's doing it. As writers' wives and husbands often learn to their horror......there is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured. In a household with more than one person, of which one is a writer, the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private, and where food can be poked in to him with a stick. Because, if you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears or become violent. Or he may not hear you at all... and, if you shake him at this stage, he bites...” - Robert Heinlen

76. “A writer's work is never done, unless he or she has no readers.” - K. Sean Harris

77. “There is no moral to my song,I praise no right, I blame no wrong;I tell of things that I have seen,I show the man that I have beenAs simply as a poet canWho knows himself poet and man.” - Thomas MacDonagh

78. “Words raced thru his mind and his fingers ached to capture them all on paper.” - Eveli Acosta

79. “Writing is easy. Writing is hard. It's a breeze and a struggle, just like life.” - Dennis R. Miller

80. “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

81. “The only way to be inclined to write is to write to your inclination.” - Terry Lander

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

83. “As writers we intend to make a difference, to alter people's lives for the greater good. . .this is why we write, to have an impact on society, to put a personal stamp on history. . .Art and literature are the legacies we leave to succeeding generations. We'll be forgotten, but our books and essays, our stories and poems can survive us. . .” - Lee Gutkind

84. “Never take yourself too seriously. Learn to let go and let the words flow.” - Caron Kamps Widden

85. “Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy” - Somerset Maugham

86. “The thing I want to write most is the next thing I write.” - Carroll Bryant

87. “The very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.” - Katherine Paterson

88. “A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first” - Louis L'Amour