50 Quotes About Writing

Well, we’ve already had fifty quotes about fiction in general so today it’s time for another fifty quotes, this time providing advice, encouragement and general reflections on the process of writing. So without further ado…

‘I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.’ — Douglas Adams
‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ — Maya Angelou
‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ — Ernest Hemingway
‘Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.’ — Mark Twain
‘If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.’ — Stephen King
‘It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.’ — Robert Hass
‘We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.’ — Anaïs Nin
‘Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.’ — E.L. Doctorow
‘A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.’ — Susan Sontag
‘You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.’ — Madeleine L’Engle
‘If a story is in you it has got to come out.’ — William Faulkner
‘You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.’ — Saul Bellow
‘I’m not a very good writer but I’m an excellent rewriter.’ — James Michener
‘You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.’ — Doris Lessing
‘It is a very cool thing to be a writer.’ — Bryan Hutchinson
‘You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.’ — Ray Bradburry
‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.’ – Toni Morrison
‘Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.’ — Louis L’Amour
‘Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.’ — Mark Twain
‘The only writer to whom you should compare yourself is the writer you were yesterday.’ — David Schlosser
‘Step into a scene and let it drip from your fingertips.’ — M.J. Bush
‘Growing up is highly overrrated. Just be an author.’ — Neil Gaiman
‘Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days.’ — J.K. Rowling
‘What doesn’t kill us gives us something to write about.’ — Julie Wright
‘There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’ — W. Somerset Maugham
‘When asked “how do you write?” I invariably answer “one word at a time.”‘ — Stephen King
‘Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.’ — Isaac Asimov
‘Writing is show business for shy people.’ — Lee Child
‘It is perfectly okay to write garbage –as long as you edit brilliantly.’ — C.J. Cherryh
‘If you’re writing stuff, you’re a writer. If you’re not writing stuff, you’re not a writer. If you publish ten thousand best sellers, all of which get made into films, then stop writing, you’re no longer a writer… Similarly, if you are writing with any kind of regularity, you are a real writer. You might be a professional or only an amateur, but you are a writer. Really.’ — A. Ferguson
‘If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.’ — Martin Luther
‘Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.’ — William Wordsworth
‘Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.’ — Philip José Farmer
‘I write to find out what I’m talking about.’ — Edward Albee
‘Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.’ — Raymond Chandler
‘You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.’ — Annie Proulx
‘Don’t be a writer. Be writing.’ — William Faulkner
‘Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen.’ — Katrina Monroe
‘Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.’ — Natalie Goldberg
‘To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.’ — Aristotle
‘You can make anything by writing.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.’ — Joss Whedon
‘I need solitude for my writing; not “like a hermit” — that wouldn’t be enough — but like a dead man.’ — Franz Kafka
‘Writers don’t make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don’t work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck’s book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man’s stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more.’ — Donald Miller
‘Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.’ — George R.R. Martin
‘A word after a word after a word is power.’ — Margaret Atwood
‘A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.’ — Thomas Mann
‘Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.’ — David McCullough
‘Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.’ — Ralph Keyes