Quotes on Writing

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck & write better than I can.- E. Hemingway



"Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." — Gene Fowler


"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect." — Anaïs Nin



"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." — Winston S. Churchill


"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."
— Robert Frost


"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


"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." — Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing)


"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live." — Henry David Thoreau


"The road to hell is paved with adverbs." — Stephen King



"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

— Flannery O'Connor


"Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters." — Neil Gaiman



"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for." — John Keating



"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." — Benjamin Franklin


“Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.” - John Jakes



“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow...” - Lawrence Clark Powell  (American Librarian, Writer and Critic, 1906-2001)


“I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.” - Oscar Wilde  (Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854-1900)



“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean”

Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Essayist, Poet and Author of fiction and travel books, 1850-1894)



“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.” - Oscar Wilde  (Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854-1900)



“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” - E. L. Doctorow  (American Author and Editor, b.1931)



“Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.” - Nadine Gordimer  (South African novelist and short-story writer, 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature, b.1923)


“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.” - Don Delillo  (American Novelist born in New York City, b.1926)

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”

Winston Churchill  (British Orator, Author and Prime Minister during World War II. 1874-1965)


“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” - E. L. Doctorow  (American Author and Editor, b.1931)


“I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on.” -Beryl Pfizer


“The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.” - Terry Southern


“Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it” - Octavia Butler