- Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. Virginia Woolf
- The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself. Eleanor Roosevelt
- I'm very lucky in that I don't understand the world yet. If I understood the world, it would be harder for me to write these books. Mo Willems
- How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Henry David Thoreau
- There's no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you. Maya Angelou
- Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. Oscar Wilde
- If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor. Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there's an explosion—that's Plot. Leigh Brackett
- Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day. Dalai Lama
- Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer. Ray Bradbury
- Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. Les Brown
- I don't need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me. Ray Bradbury
- I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide. Harper Lee
- Unsuccessful people make their decisions based on their current situations. Successful people make their decisions based on where they want to be. Benjamin Hardy
- Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear. George Addair
- Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. Anton Chekhov
- This is how you do it: You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it's done. It's that easy, and that hard. Neil Gaiman
- Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly - they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. Aldous Huxley
- Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Love of the Last Tycoon
- Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. Gene Fowler
- The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story. Ursula K. Le Guin
- The path to success is to take massive, determined action. Tony Robbins
- Style means the right word. The rest matters little. Jules Renard
- People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. Ralph Waldo Emerson
- If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. Ray Bradbury
- We never sit anything out. We are cups, quietly and constantly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
- Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. William Strunk Jr.
- What we fear of doing most is usually what we most need to do. Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself. Eleanor Roosevelt
- You can make anything by writing. C.S. Lewis
- If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you. Natalie Goldberg
- You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence. Octavia E. Butler
- The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. Mark Twain
- If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood. Peter Handke
- You always get more respect when you don't have a happy ending. Julia Quinn
- If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels. Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm
- One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. Jack Kerouac
- A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film. Lorrie Moore
- Most editors are failed writers - but so are most writers. T.S. Eliot
- I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it. William Carlos Williams
- We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are, and what our relationship is to life and death, what is essential, and what, despite the arbitrariness of falling beams, will not burn. Madeleine L'Engle
- Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Anne Lamott
- Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. John Steinbeck
- Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you're being told. John Green
- Always be a poet, even in prose. Charles Baudelaire
- Being a writer is not just about typing. It's also about surviving the rollercoaster of the creative journey. Joanna Penn
- Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. Stephen King
- The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words. William H. Gass
- I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story. Tom Clancy
- Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river. Lisa See, Snow Flower, and the Secret Fan
50 Motivational Writing Quotes from Famous Authors for Everyday
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself. Eleanor Roosevelt
