Inspirational Quotes
Words to motivate, inspire, and guide you.
Writing Quotes
CreativityExpressionWriting I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast - talk them or write them down.
AuthenticitySelf-DiscoverySimplicityWriting I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write.
ClaritySelf-EffacementWriting It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.
ActingRecognitionTalentWriting I knew Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were really talented. As actors, they were both studly young men, and they had great writers' chops.
EnduranceInner ConflictTimelessnessWriting Writers have to put up with this editor thing; it is ageless and eternal and wrong.
CommunicationExpressionIntentionPersonal ConnectionWriting Letters are something from you. It's a different kind of intention than writing an e-mail.
ConcisenessEditingWriting 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.
Character DevelopmentCreativityRealismWriting When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
CreativityExperiencePerspectiveStruggleWriting The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.
CreativityInspirationSpontaneityWriting Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour.
FocusProductivitySelf-DisciplineWriting When I write, when I'm going hot, I don't want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you're pushing it.
LegacyWriting I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.
DedicationStruggleVulnerabilityWriting There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
PerseverancePerspectiveUniquenessWriting If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer.
AuthenticityConfidenceEaseGoalsWriting I'm a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don't agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.
ExperienceHonorSurvivalWriting Certainly it is valuable to a trained writer to crash in an aircraft which burns. He learns several important things very quickly. Whether they will be of use to him is conditioned by survival. Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer.
CreativityHumanismPerceptionStorytellingWriting One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.
CommunicationExpressionPressure ReliefTalkingWriting Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.
DisciplineInspirationLoveSolitudeWriting You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.
ArtCreativityExpressionObservationWriting In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.
CreativityEvolutionPassionPracticeWriting You just don't wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.
AftermathCompletionResponsibilityWriting After you finish a book, you know, you're dead. But no one knows you're dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.
EffortImprovementLuckWriting For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.