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Need a little pick-me-up? Browse these inspiring quotes that will encourage you to keep writing.
On Preparing to Write
“Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic.” —J. K. Rowling
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” —Toni Morrison
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” —Maya Angelou
“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” —Orson Scott
“It seems to me that what writers are supposed to do is use their imaginations. Imagination is one of the most important things we have.” —Susanna Clarke
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” —Louis L’Amour
Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.” —William Faulkner
“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” —Margaret Atwood
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” —Sylvia Plath
“The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.’ Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.” —Charles Dickens
“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” —John Steinbeck
On Writing
“Writing is its own reward.” —Henry Miller
“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.” —William H. Gass
“You can make anything by writing.” —C.S. Lewis
“Every writer I know has trouble writing.” —Joseph Heller
“Never, never, never, never give up.” —Winston Churchill
“Anyone who says writing is easy isn’t doing it right.” —Amy Joy
“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” —Anne Frank
“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation.” —Graham Greene
“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” —Shannon Hale
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” —Terry Pratchett
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” —W. Somerset Maugham
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” —Anton Chekhov
“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
“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” —Robert Frost
On Rewriting
“It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.” —C. J. Cherryh
“Good writing is rewriting.” —Truman Capote
“Half my life is an act of revision.” —John Irving
“I’m all for the scissors. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.” —Truman Capote
“My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.” —Anton Chekhov
“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” —Stephen King
“If you have no critics, you’ll likely have no success.” —Malcolm X
On Continuing to Write
“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
“If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.” —Edgar Rice Burroughs
“You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.” —John Wooden
“Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing . . . the rest will follow.” —Jane Yolen
“Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.” —Ralph Keyes
“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” —James Baldwin
“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
“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” —Richard Bach
“I believe myself that a good writer doesn’t really need to be told anything except to keep at it.” —Chinua Achebe
“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” —C. S. Lewis
What are some of your favorite inspirational quotes on writing? Let us know in the comments!
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