Inspirational Writing Quotes

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. ~ Ben Franklin

On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away. ~ Annie Dillard

***Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. ~ Elbert Hubbard

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. ~ Ernest Hemingway

If writers stopped writing about what happened to them, then there would be a lot of empty pages. ~ Elaine Liner

*The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. ~ Anaïs Nin

***If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ~ Toni Morrison

*Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~ William Wordsworth

**Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~ Anton Chekhov

***The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. ~ Mark Twain

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

*To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make. ~ Truman Capote

*I'd rather be caught holding up a bank than stealing so much as a two-word phrase from another writer. ~ Jack Smith

**The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation. ~ Elias Canetti

*Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. ~ E.L. Doctorow

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

***Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head. ~ From the movie Finding Forrester

Writing is both mask and unveiling. ~ E.B. White

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

***Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to. ~ Tom Bissell

*If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves. ~Don Marquis

*A man will turn over half a library to make one book. ~ Samuel Johnson

*No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published. ~ Russell Lynes

***A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~ Thomas Mann

**An author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.~ Colette

* means I like the quote
** means that I can really relate to that quote
*** means that I really like AND can relate to that quote