Writing Quotes:

65 Quotes to motivate you to achieve writing success.

We all need a little motivation to help us achieve our goals. Sometimes we just need a little nudge to inspire us, and other times it is a swift kick in the rump that we need to move forward.

With writing we must hold ourselves accountable to get the work completed in a timely manner, there is no boss to answer to for our delay. (See Quote number 53 by Roald Dahl) .

Successful writers have wise advice to share with us on writing here are their words of wisdom through 65 quotes to inspire you to not only begin, but complete your writing to the best of your ability.

65 inspiring quotes by famous authors to motivate you to write your story.

1: “Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape.” ~Craig Ferguson

2: “If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning...” ~Walter Mosley

3: “Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.” ~ Meg Cabot

4: “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.” ~ W. Somerset Maugham

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

6: “They say living well is the best revenge but sometimes writing well is even better.” ~James Franco

7: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ~Ernest Hemingway

8: “The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.” ~Ernest Hemingway

9: “It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” ~Ernest Hemingway

10: “After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.” ~Ernest Hemingway

11: “Don't you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don't even have to be true!” ~Dave Barry

12: “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” ~Louis L'Amour

13: “The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.” ~ Iain M. Banks

14: “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” ~Douglas Adams

15: “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” ~Toni Morrison

16: “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” ~Saul Bellow

17: “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

18: “Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.” ~ Elie Wiesel

19: “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

20: “I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else.” ~ Cormac McCarthy

21: “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

22: “If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.” ~ Anais Nin

23: “Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.” ~ Neil Gaiman

24: “This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.” Neil Gaiman

25: “You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” ~Jack London



26: “You can fix anything but a blank page.” ~Nora Roberts

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

28: “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.” ~Octavia Butler

29: “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

30: “I'm a drinker with writing problems.” ~ Brendan Behan

31: “Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost.” ~Thomas Bernhard

32: “Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.” ~ Ray Bradbury

33: “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” ~Ray Bradbury

34: “You grow ravenous. You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can't sleep at night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you in your bed. It is a grand way to live.” ~ Ray Bradbury

35: “Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.” ~Steve Martin

36: “Writer's block? I've heard of this. This is when a writer cannot write, yes? Then that person isn't a writer anymore. I'm sorry, but the job is getting up in the morning and writing for a living.” ~ Warren Ellis

37: “Nothing's a better cure for writer's block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.” ~ Don Roff

38: “You don't need to wait for inspiration to write. It's easier to be inspired while writing than while not writing...” ~Josip Novakovich

39: “In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, and exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me." ~C.S. Lewis

40: “So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.” ~ Stephen King



41: “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” ~ Stephen King

42: “I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.” ~Stephen King

43: “When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.” ~Stephen King

44: “In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.” ~ Stephen King

45: “If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.” ~Stephen King

Check out our list of the 27 Scariest books by Stephen King to Terrorize Your Dreams.

46: “I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.” ~Stephen King

47: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” ~ Stephen King

48: “One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, working for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed, and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.” ~ Stephen King

49: “When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.” ~Charles Bukowski

50: “You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.” ~Truman Capote

51: “I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.” ~ Isaac Asimov

52: “It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.” Robert Benchley

53: “The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him...A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.” ~Roald Dahl



54: “If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.” ~David Mitchell

55: “Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

56: “Don't get it right - get it WRITTEN!” ~Lee Child

57: “Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.” ~Mel Brooks

58: “Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.” ~ Louisa May Alcott

59: “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.” ~Benjamin Franklin

60: “Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.” ~Laura Kasischke

61: “Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.” ~Wally Lamb

62: “Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.” ~Robert McKee

63: “Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what the Internet brings is lots of vulgar data. It is the antithesis of the imagination. It leaves nothing to the imagination.” ~Jonathan Franzen

64: “Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.” ~Natalie Goldberg

65: “There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book. You have 200 pages to tickle their fancy, and seven words to break their heart.” ~Alex de Campi

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