Plus, November is known as both National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) and National Memoir Writing Month. So if you’ve been working on a novel or memoir, this is the perfect time of year to find some extra motivation in the form of these writing quotes from your own favorite writers. Read through these 75 quotes about writing to re-ignite your passion for writing or to simply give yourself the little nudge that you currently need. You’ll find that these famous authors have a lot to say about the stories that need to be told.
Inspiring Quotes About Writing
1. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” — Maya Angelou 2. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” — Toni Morrison 3. “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” — Ernest Hemingway 4. “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 5. “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.” — Lloyd Alexander 6. “Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.” — William Faulkner 7. “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” — Saul Bellow 8. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” — Robert Frost 9. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” — Stephen King 10. “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” — Louis L’Amour 11. “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” — Philip Pullman 12. “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” — Winston S. Churchill 13. “Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.” — Neil Gaiman 14. “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” — Franz Kafka 15. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” — Stephen King
Encouraging Words About Writing
16. “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” — Anne Frank 17. “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” — W. Somerset Maugham 18. “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” — William Wordsworth 19. “A word after a word after a word is power.” — Margaret Atwood 20. “There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.” — Beatrix Potter 21. “Tears are words that need to be written.” — Paulo Coelho 22. “You can make anything by writing.” — C.S. Lewis 23. “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 24. “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 25. “A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.” — Caroline Gordon 26. “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” — Jack London 27. “Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.” — Philip José Farmer 28. “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 29. “Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” — Stephen King 30. “Write what should not be forgotten.” — Isabel Allende
Wise Words On Writing
31. “I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” — James Michener 32. “Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don’t want to make eye contact while doing it." — John Green 33. “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 34. “All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and thenI can turn the world upside down.” — Friedrich Nietzsche 35. “My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.” — Ernest Hemingway 36. “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” — Stephen King 37. “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” — Thomas Jefferson 38. “Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.” — Ray Bradbury 39. “Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.” — Margaret Atwood 40. “Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” — Jules Renard 41. “Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.” — Franz Kafka 42. “Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." — Cyril Connolly 43. “One should use common words to say uncommon things.” — Arthur Schopenhauer 44. “The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.” — Vladimir Nabokov 45. “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” — Flannery O’Connor
Best Quotes About Writing
46. “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” — E.M. Forster 47. “If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” — Martin Luther 48. “Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential.” — Jessamyn West 49. “To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.” — Aristotle 50. “Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.” — Brenda Ueland 51. “It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” — Ernest Hemingway 52. “Ideas aren’t magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down." — Lynn Abbey 53. “The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” — Agatha Christie 54. “Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.” — Lisa See 55. “Write about the emotions you fear the most.” — Laurie Halse Anderson 56. “Writing is a job, a talent, but it’s also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.” — Ann Patchett 57. “If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!” — Jackie Collins 58. “If a story is in you, it has to come out.” — William Faulkner 59. “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” — Richard Bach 60. “Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it." — Colette 61. “Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.” — Eudora Welty 62. “I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.” — Gustave Flaubert 63. “Don’t give people what they want, give them what they need.” — Joss Whedon 64. “Nothing’s a better cure for writer’s block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.” — Don Roff 65. “The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 66. “Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.” — George R.R. Martin 67. “You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.” — Truman Capote 68. “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” — Terry Pratchett 69. “The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.” — Benjamin Disraeli 70. “My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.” — Abigail Adams 71. “I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.” — Ann Brashares 72. “You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.” — Jessica Mitford 73. “If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it.” — H.G. Wells 74. “The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn’t.” — Iain M. Banks 75. “Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.” — Red Haircrow Next Up: Ask John: How Do I Get Started Writing My Book?
