The Power Of Words

129 Of The Most Inspiring Quotes

(Selected Just For Writers)
“I put a piece of paper under
my pillow, and when I could
not sleep I wrote in the dark.”
Henry David Thoreau
 “A writer lives, at least,
in a state of astonishment.
Beneath any feeling he has of the
good or evil of the world lies a
deeper one of wonder at it all.
To transmit that feeling, he writes.”
William Sansom
 "However great a man's
natural talent may be,
the art of writing cannot be
learned all at once."
Jean Jacques Rousseau
“... only he is an emancipated
thinker who is not afraid
to write foolish things.”
Anton Chekhov
"Better to write for yourself
and have no public,
than to write for the public
and have no self."
Cyril Connolly
"A writer is working when he's
staring out of the window."
Burton Rascoe
"The secret of popular writing
is never to put more on
a given page than the common
reader can lap off it with no
strain whatsoever on his
habitually slack attention."
Ezra Pound
 “Nothing you write, if you
hope to be any good, will ever
come out as you first hoped.”
Lillian Helman
"Write in recollection and
amazement for yourself."
Jack Kerouac
"If there's a book you really
want to read but it
hasn't been written yet,
then you must write it."
Toni Morrison
 "To be clear is the first
duty of a writer;
to charm and to please are
graces to be acquired later."
Brander Matthews
 "The idea is to get the
pencil moving quickly…
Once you've got some words
looking back at you,
you can take two or three - throw
them away and look for others."
Bernard Malamud
 "In composing, as a general
rule, run your pen through
every other word you have
written; you have no idea what
vigor it will give to your style."
Sydney Smith
 "…you have to develop a
conscience and if on top of
that you have talent
so much the better.
But if you have talent without
conscience, you are just one of
many thousand journalists."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
 "I was working on the
proof of one of my
poems all the morning,
and took out a comma.
In the afternoon
I put it back again."
Oscar Wilde
"I love being a writer.
What I can't stand
is the paperwork."
Peter de Vries
 "The writer's duty is
to keep on writing…"
William Styron
"Whether or not you write
well, write bravely."
Bill Stout
“Caress the detail,
the divine detail."
Vladimir Nabokov
"Never trust the artist.
Trust the tale."
D.H. Lawrence
"…your reader is at least
as bright as you are."
William Maxwell
 "Use the right word
and not its second cousin."
Mark Twain
 "The first draft of
anything is sh*t."
Ernest Hemingway
 "Real writers are those
who want to write,
need to write, have to write."
Robert Penn Warren
"You only learn to be a better
writer by actually writing."
Doris Lessing
 "The business of the novelist
is not to relate great events,
but to make small ones interesting."
Arthur Schopenhauer
"I seat myself at the typewriter
and hope, and lurk."
Mignon Eberhart
 "Stick to the point."
W. Somerset Maugham
 "Inspiration is wonderful
when it happens,
but the writer must
develop an approach for the
rest of the time…
The wait is simply too long."
Leonard S. Bernstein
 "I don't like to write,
but I love to have written."
Michael Kanin
"A woman must have money
and room of her own
if she is to write fiction."
Virginia Woolf
"The duty and the task
of a writer are those of
an interpreter."
Marcel Proust
"Planning to write is not writing.
Outlining…researching…
talking to people about
what you're doing,
none of that is writing.
Writing is writing."
E.L. Doctorow
 "When genuine passion
moves you, say what you've
got to say, and say it hot."
D.H. Lawrence
“If you know what you are
going to write when
you're writing a poem,
it's going to be average."
Derek Walcott
 "You can be a little
ungrammatical if you
come from the right part
of the country."
Robert Frost
 "The difference between
the right word and the
almost right word is the
difference between lightning
and the lightning bug."
Mark Twain
"I write the first sentence and
trust in God for the next."
Laurence Sterne
 "Never write about a place
until you're away from it,
because that gives you perspective."
Ernest Hemingway
"Write what should
not be forgotten…"
Isabel Allende
 "Too many writers are
trying to write with too
shallow an education.
Whether they go to college
or not is immaterial…
a good writer needs a sense
of the history of literature
to be successful as a writer."
James Kisner
 "In a writer there must
always be two people –
the writer and the critic."
Leo Tolstoy
“Write without pay until
somebody offers to pay."
Mark Twain
“The first rule, indeed by itself
virtually a sufficient
condition for good style,
is to have something to say."
Arthur Schopenhauer
“Writing is a sweet,
wonderful reward…"
Franz Kafka
"You have typewriters, presses.
And a huge audience.
How about raising hell?"
Jenkin Lloyd Jones
"Revise and revise and revise -
the best thought will
come after the printer has
snatched away the copy."
Michael Morahan
 "Even the most productive
writers are expert dawdlers…"
Donald M. Murray
"Suspect all your favorite
sentences."
Kenneth Atchity
"Don't overwrite description in
a story - you haven't got time."
Elizabeth Spencer
 "There are three rules for
writing the novel.
Unfortunately, no one knows
what they are."
Somerset Maugham
 "Have something to say and
say it as clearly as you can.
That is the only secret of style."
Matthew Arnold
 "Revision is one of
the exquisite
pleasures of writing…."
Bernard Malamud
"…writing comes more easily if
you have something to say."
Sholem Asch
 "Words have weight, sound
and appearance; it is only by
considering these that you can
write a sentence that is good to
look at and good to listen to."
Somerset Maugham
 "…therein is in writing the
constant joy of sudden
discovery, of happy accident."
H.L. Mencken
 "A writer is somebody for
whom writing is more difficult
than it is for other people."
Thomas Mann
 "Thoughts fly and words
go on foot. Therein lies all
the drama of a writer."
Julien Green
 "You fail only if
you stop writing."
Ray Bradbury
 ‘It took me fifteen years to
discover I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give it up because
by that time I was too famous.’
Robert Benchley
"Take away the art of writing
from this world, and you will
probably take away its glory."
Chateaubriand
"A writer lives, at best, in a
state of astonishment."
William Sansom
“I never knew what was meant
by choice of words.
It was one word or none.”
Robert Frost
“Look for all fancy wordings
and get rid of them…
Avoid all terms and
expressions, old or new,
that embody affectation.”
Jacques Barzun
 "You must write for
yourself, above all.
That is [your] only hope of
creating something beautiful."
Gustave Flaubert
 "I always do the first line well,
but I have trouble with the others."
Moliere
 "Writing well is at one
and the same time
good thinking, good feeling,
and good expression;
it is having wit, soul, and taste,
all together."
Buffon
 "To me, the greatest
pleasure of writing is not
what it's about, but the inner
music the words make."
Truman Capote
 "All good writing is
swimming under water
and holding your breath."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
 "You become a writer
because you need to
become a writer - nothing else."
Grace Paley
‘Writing is the only thing that,
when I do it,
I don't feel I should be doing
something else.’
Gloria Steinem
“There have been great societies
that did not use the wheel,
but there have been no societies
that did not tell stories.”
Ursula K Le Guin
“As regards plot I find real life
no help at all. Real life seems
to have no plots. And as I
think a plot desirable and
almost necessary, I have this
extra grudge against life.”
Ivy Compton-Burnett
 “If a publisher declines
your manuscript,
remember it is merely the
decision of one fallible
human being, and try another.”
Sir Stanley Unwin
 “An autobiography is an
obituary in serial form with
the last installment missing.”
Quentin Crisp
 ‘Write freely and as rapidly
as possible and throw the
whole thing on paper.
Never correct or rewrite until
the whole thing is down.’
John Steinbeck
 “A good book is the precious
life-blood of a master spirit,
embalmed and treasured up on
purpose to a life beyond life.”
John Milton
“I never think at all when I write
nobody can do two things
at the same time
and do them both well.”
Don Marquis
 “The book trade is a
spiritual barometer of
a nation's well-being.”
John Buchan
“There's no money in poetry,
but then there's no
poetry in money either.”
Robert Graves
 “The wastepaper basket
is the writer’s best friend.”
Isaac Singer
 “While thought exists,
words are alive and literature
becomes an escape,
not from, but into living.”
Cyril Connolly
 "Know something, sugar?
Stories only happen to
people who can tell them."
Allan Gurganus
"Writing is an adventure."
Winston Churchill
“Truth may be stranger than
fiction, but fiction is truer.”
Frederic Raphael
 ‘All fiction is largely
autobiographical
and much autobiography is,
of course, fiction.’
P D James
 "What a writer brings to
any story is an attitude…"
John Gregory Dunne
 “I try to leave out the
parts that people skip.”
Elmore Leonard
 "Writing is an exploration.
You start from
nothing and learn as you go."
E.L. Doctorow
“The most essential gift for a
good writer is a built-in,
shock-proof lie detector.
This is the writer's radar and
all great writers have had it.”
Ernest Hemingway
 “Once a writer is born into a
family, that family is doomed.”
Czselaw Milosz
 “Read the best books first,
or you may not have a
chance to read them at all.”
Henry David Thoreau
 “Some of them say I've got an
idealized vision of life...
some of them say I use too many
adjectives. Well I just say,
"My dears! Why should I care?
I've got something called readers.”
Barbara Taylor Bradford
 “Writing is a strange synthesis
between the two parts
of your mind: the analytical side
and the side that knows nothing
at all, and you have to allow the
dreaming side free rein.”
Rose Tremain
 “Writing is just having a
sheet of paper, a pen
and not a shadow of an idea of
what you are going to say.”
Francoise Sagan
 “There are three rules for
writing the novel.
Unfortunately no one knows
what they are.”
Somerset Maugham
“Being a writer in Hollywood
is like going into
Hitler's Eagle's Nest with a
great idea for a Bar Mitzvah.”
David Mamet
 “For those who can do it and
who keep their nerve, writing
for a living still beats most real,
grown-up jobs hands down.”
Terence Blacker
 “I don't believe in children's
books. I think after you've
read Kidnapped, Treasure
Island and Huckleberry Finn,
you're ready for anything.”
John Mortimer
 “First a mistress you
dally and play with,
then she becomes your master
and finally your tyrant.”
Winston Churchill
on writing a book
 “A good style should show
no sign of effort.
What is written should seem a
happy accident.”
Somerset Maugham
 “A writer needs three things,
experience, observation, and
imagination, any two of which,
at times any one of which,
can supply the lack of the others.”
William Faulkner
 “I'm a writer –
if I stop writing, I'm nothing.”
Wilbur Smith
 “It is with books as with
men - a very small number
play a great part; the rest are
lost in the multitude.”
Voltaire
 “There's nothing to writing.
All you do is sit down at a
type-writer and open a vein.”
Red Smith
 “Nature, not content
with denying him
the ability to think,
has endowed him with
the ability to write.”
A E Housman
 'In a very real sense, people
who have read good literature
have lived more than people who
cannot or will not read...
It is not true that we have only one
life to live; if we can read, we can
live as many more lives and as
many kinds of lives as we wish.'
S A Hayakawa
 “It would be no loss to the
world if most of the writers now
writing had been strangled at birth.”
Rebecca West
 'When a book leaves your hands,
it belongs to God.
He may use it to save a few
souls or to try a few others,
but I think that for the writer to
worry is to take over God’s business.’
Flannery O’Connor
 “When you're writing,
you're creating something
out of nothing...
A successful piece of writing
is like doing a
successful piece of magic.”
Susanna Clarke
“The best effect of any book
is that it excites
the reader to self activity.”
Thomas Carlyle
 “Far better to write
twaddle or anything,
anything, than nothing at all.”
Katherine Mansfield
 “The most crucial thing is to learn
the craft: how to string sentences
together, how to make your
dialogue sound like real people,
how to properly pace a story, how to
develop interesting characters.”
Stephen Coonts
 “A classic is a book that
has never finished
saying what it has to say.”
Italo Calvino
 “The most original authors
are not so because they
advance what is new,
but because they put what
they have to say as if it had
never been said before.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“It is my ambition to say in
ten sentences what others
say in a whole book.”
Nietzsche
 “Every compulsion is put
upon writers to become safe,
polite, obedient and sterile.”
Sinclair Lewis
 “Every time I read a
Jane Austen novel,
I feel like a bartender at
the gates of heaven.”
Mark Twain
“Inspiration is the act
of drawing up a chair
to the writing desk.”
Anon
 “The sole end of literature
should be to enable
the reader better to enjoy life,
or better to endure it.”
Samuel Johnson
“Every man who knows how
to read has it in his power to
magnify himself, to multiply
the ways in which he exists,
the make his life full,
significant and interesting.”
Aldous Huxley
“Writing free verse is
like playing tennis
with the net down.”
Robert Frost

'
 “A book is so much a part of
oneself that in delivering it
to the public one feels as
if one were pushing one’s own
child out into the traffic.”
Quentin Bell
 “The life of a writer is
absolute hell compared to
the life of a businessman.”
Roald Dahl
 “The good thing about
writing fiction is that you
can get back at people.”
John Grisham
 “Writing a first novel
takes so much effort,
with such little promise
of result or reward,
that it must necessarily
be a labor of love
bordering on madness.”
Steven Saylor
“Nothing gives an author so
much pleasure as to find his
works respectfully quoted by
other learned authors.”
Benjamin Franklin
 "You must write every
single day of your life…
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….
may you be in love every day
for the next 20,000 days.
And out of that love, remake a world."
Ray Bradbury
 “Let the power of words
light the candles of our souls
setting the world on fire,
inspiring greatness;
for all things good can one day
be great, if only you believe.”
Lori R Taylor