quotes to use in creative writing

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Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Posted on Mar 29, 2019

170 Writing Quotes by Famous Authors for Every Occasion

When you're feeling stuck on your novel, an important thing to remember is that we've all been there in the past. That's right — even the J.K Rowling's and Ernest Hemingway's of this world. Which is why it's always a great idea to turn to your most famous peers (and their writing quotes) for inspiration.

Without further ado, here are 170 writing quotes  to guide you through every stage of writing. ( Yes! We've added more since we first published this post! )

The number one piece of advice that most authors have for other authors is to read, read, read. Here’s why.

1. “If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools ) to write. Simple as that.” — Stephen King

2. “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

3. “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

4. “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

5. “I kept always two books in my pocket: one to read, one to write in.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

6. “The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.” — Ernest Gaines

7. “The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.” — Samuel Johnson

8. “Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.” ― Lisa See

9. “One sure window into a person’s soul is his reading list.” — Mary B. W. Tabor

The well of inspiration, we’re afraid, often does run dry. Here are the writing quotes to replenish it and, hopefully, remind you that there might be a story idea waiting for you just around the corner of life.

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10. "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." — Toni Morrison

11. “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

12. “Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.” — Stephen King

13. “Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.” — Mark Twain

14. “When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” — George Orwell

15. “Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.” — Natalie Goldberg

16. “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

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

18. “Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.” — William S. Burroughs

19. “Write what should not be forgotten.” — Isabel Allende

20. “The story must strike a nerve in me. My heart should start pounding when I hear the first line in my head. I start trembling at the risk.” — Susan Sontag

21. “Sometimes the ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It’s a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works. I like a mystery, as you may have noticed.” — J.K. Rowling

22. “As for ‘Write what you know,’ I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

23. “I’m very lucky in that I don’t understand the world yet. If I understood the world, it would be harder for me to write these books.” — Mo Willems

24. “Ideas are cheap. It’s the execution that is all important.” — George R.R. Martin

25. “If you wait for inspiration to write you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.” — Dan Poynter

Now, finding your "voice" is not as simple as entering a nationally-televised competition on NBC ( nyuk nyuk! ). Yet your voice will define you as a writer, and these famous writers have plenty of tips and writing quotes for you when it comes to finding it.

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26. “To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.” — Allen Ginsberg

27. “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” — Jack Kerouac

28. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” —Robert Frost

29. “It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.” — P.D. James

30. “Voice is not just the result of a single sentence or paragraph or page. It’s not even the sum total of a whole story. It’s all your work laid out across the table like the bones and fossils of an unidentified carcass.” — Chuck Wendig

31. “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.” — Elmore Leonard

32. “Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul.” — Meg Rosoff

33. “I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

34. “Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.” — Virginia Woolf

35. “Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.” — Flannery O’Connor

36. “There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn’t because the book is not there and worth being written — it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and, if you fail to find that form, the story will not tell itself.” — Mark Twain

37. “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” — Louis L’Amour

38. “First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him.” — Ray Bradbury

39. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” — Ernest Hemingway

40. “Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself.” — Mark Twain

41. “Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of job: It’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.” — Neil Gaiman

42. “It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.” — Ernest Hemingway

43. “It doesn’t matter how many book ideas you have if you can’t finish writing your book.” — Joe Bunting

44. “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” — Margaret Atwood

45. “A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.” — Sidney Sheldon

46. “I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on until I am.” — Jane Austen

47. "Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." — William Faulkner

48. “One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing — writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.” — Lawrence Block

49. “Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.” — John Steinbeck

50. “You can fix anything but a blank page.” — Nora Roberts

51. “I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” — Pearl S. Buck

52. “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed.” — Ernest Hemingway

Don’t get discouraged if you get this far and you’re thinking that your first draft is rather poor. These writing quotes are reminders that it’s just part of the process.

53. “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” — Terry Pratchett

54. “Get through a draft as quickly as possible.” — Joshua Wolf Shenk

55. “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” — Douglas Adams

56. “The first draft of everything is shit.” — Ernest Hemingway

57. “There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” — Frank Herbert

58. “I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them — without a thought about publication — and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.” — Anne Tyler

59. “I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts, so it doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever, because there’s a 90 percent chance I’m just going to delete whatever I write anyway. I find this hugely liberating.” — John Green

60. “Be willing to write really badly.” — Jennifer Egan

61. “On first drafts: It is completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut — it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts.” — Stephen King

62. “I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.” — Tom Clancy

63. “Anyone who says writing is easy isn’t doing it right.” — Amy Joy

64. “You fail only if you stop writing.” — Ray Bradbury

65. “If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.” — Isaac Asimov

66. “Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.” — Ray Bradbury

67. “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

68. “I believe myself that a good writer doesn’t really need to be told anything except to keep at it.” — Chinua Achebe

69. “The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.” — Augusten Burroughs

70. “It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.” — Gerald Brenan

71. “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

72. “You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless — there is only one thing to do with a novel and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.” — Ernest Hemingway

73. “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” — Kurt Vonnegut

74. “The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying ‘Faire et se taire’ from Flaubert. Which I translate for myself as ‘Shut up and get on with it.’” — Helen Simpson

75. “I’ve been writing since I was six. It is a compulsion, so I can’t really say where the desire came from; I’ve always had it. My breakthrough with the first book came through persistence, because a lot of publishers turned it down.” — J.K. Rowling

76. “Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer.” — Ray Bradbury

77. “It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.” — Virginia Woolf

78. “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” — Richard Bach

“Write drunk, edit sober” might be one of the most famous writing quotes about editing, but we can’t all outdrink Ernest Hemingway. Which is why these other words of wisdom and writing quotes exist!

79. “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” ― Jodi Picoult

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80. “When your story is ready for a 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

81. “The best advice on writing was given to me by my first editor, Michael Korda, of Simon and Schuster, while writing my first book. 'Finish your first draft and then we'll talk,' he said. It took me a long time to realize how good the advice was. Even if you write it wrong, write and finish your first draft. Only then, when you have a flawed whole, do you know what you have to fix.” — Dominick Dunne

82. “Editing might be a bloody trade, but knives aren’t the exclusive property of butchers. Surgeons use them too.” — Blake Morrison

83. “The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.” — E.B. White

84. “You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you, and we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.” — Arthur Plotnik

85. “Half my life is an act of revision.” — John Irving

86. “I'm all for the scissors. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.” — Truman Capote

87. “It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.” — C. J. Cherryh

88. “I've found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it.” ― Don Roff

89. “Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we'.” — Mark Twain

90. “So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” ― Dr. Seuss

91. “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” — Henry David Thoreau

92. “I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times — once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say. Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one's fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.” — Bernard Malamud

93. “No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.” — Russell Lynes

94. “Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.” — Annie Dillard

95. “No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.” — H.G. Wells

96. “A writer is a world trapped in a person.” — Victor Hugo

97. “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” — Thomas Mann

98. “People say, ‘What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?’ I say, they don’t really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they’re gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.” — R.L. Stine

99. “As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.” ― Ernest Hemingway

100. “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

101. “Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.” — Sylvia Plath

102. “I go out to my little office, where I’ve got a manuscript, and the last page I was happy with is on top. I read that, and it’s like getting on a taxiway. I’m able to go through and revise it and put myself — click — back into that world.” — Stephen King

103. “I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.” — William Carlos Williams

104. “Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.” — Gore Vidal

105. “For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.” — Catherine Drinker Bowen

106. “The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.” — Thomas Mann

107. “Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.” — T.S. Eliot

108. “Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.” — Margaret Chittenden

109. “A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.” — Eugene Ionesco

110. “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” — Benjamin Franklin

111. “A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.” — Roald Dahl

112. “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” — Gloria Steinem

From cavemen to our modern day in the 21st-century, we have written our joys and sorrows throughout history. What compels us to write? Here’s what some of the most beloved writers we know have to say.

113. “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” — Anne Frank

114. “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” — Anais Nin

115. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou

116. “The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.” — Zadie Smith

117. “The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis.” — William Styron

118. “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.” — Robin Williams

119. “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.” — Aldous Huxley

120. “You can make anything by writing.” — C.S. Lewis

121. “Writers live twice.” —  Natalie Goldberg

122. “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” — Winston Churchill

123. “Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” — Oscar Wilde

124. “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” — Ray Bradbury

125. “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass .” ― Anton Chekhov

126. “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

127. “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” — Somerset Maugham

128. “Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” — Stephen King

129. “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

130. “Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don’t let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won’t matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.” — Esther Freud

131. “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. [...] All they do is show you've been to college.” — Kurt Vonnegut

132. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.” — Herman Melville

133. “Write drunk, edit sober.” — Ernest Hemingway

134. “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” — Mark Twain

135. “The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.” — Neil Gaiman

136. “Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” — Jane Yolen

137. “Style means the right word. The rest matters little.” — Jules Renard

138. “My aim in constructing sentences is to make the sentence utterly easy to understand, writing what I call transparent prose. I’ve failed dreadfully if you have to read a sentence twice to figure out what I meant.” — Ken Follett

139. “And one of [the things you learn as you get older] is, you really need less… My model for this is late Beethoven. He moves so strangely and quite suddenly sometimes from place to place in his music, in the late quartets. He knows where he’s going and he just doesn’t want to waste all that time getting there… One is aware of this as one gets older. You can’t waste time.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

140. “ Part 1. I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English — it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in . Part 2. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. Part 3. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” — Mark Twain

“You miss 100% of the shots that you never take — Wayne Gretsky,” as Michael Scott once said. In tribute to this sentiment, these writing quotes help show why it’s important not to let failure or rejection get you down.

141. “You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.” — John Wooden

142. “Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil — but there is no way around them.” — Isaac Asimov

143. “Was I bitter? Absolutely. Hurt? You bet your sweet ass I was hurt. Who doesn’t feel a part of their heart break at rejection. You ask yourself every question you can think of, what, why, how come, and then your sadness turns to anger. That’s my favorite part. It drives me, feeds me, and makes one hell of a story.” — Jennifer Salaiz

144. “I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.” — Sylvia Plath

145. “I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent, he would be wise to develop a thick hide.” — Harper Lee

147. “I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I’m going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.” — James Lee Burke

148. “This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘Not at this address’. Just keep looking for the right address.” — Barbara Kingsolver

149. “To ward off a feeling of failure, she joked that she could wallpaper her bathroom with rejection slips, which she chose not to see as messages to stop, but rather as tickets to the game.” — Anita Shreve

150. “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” — Neil Gaiman

151. “The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.” — William Faulkner

152. “I think that you have to believe in your destiny; that you will succeed, you will meet a lot of rejection and it is not always a straight path, there will be detours — so enjoy the view.” — Michael York

153. “I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.” — Erica Jong

154. “I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love.” — Anita Diamant

155. “I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long.” — Louise Brown

156. “I had immediate success in the sense that I sold something right off the bat. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake and it really wasn’t. I have drawers full of — or I did have — drawers full of rejection slips.” — Fred Saberhagen

157. “An absolutely necessary part of a writer’s equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.” — Irwin Shaw

158. “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” — C. S. Lewis

Why does writing matter? If there’s anyone who might know the answer, it’s the people who write — and continue to write, despite adverse circumstances. Here are a few pennies for their thoughts.

159. “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.” — Virginia Woolf

160. “If the book is true, it will find an audience that is meant to read it.” — Wally Lamb

161. “A word after a word after a word is power.” — Margaret Atwood

162. “If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” — Martin Luther

163. “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” — Albert Camus

164. “Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” — David Foster Wallace

165. “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” — Philip Pullman

166. “All stories have to at least try to explain some small portion of the meaning of life.” — Gene Weingarten

167. “If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.” — Peter Handke

168. “The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.” — Tom Clancy

169. “If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.” — Lillian Hellman

170. “Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.” — Lev Grossman

Of course, writing quotes by themselves won't write the book for you — you alone have that power. However, we hope that this post has helped inspire you in some way! If you're looking for more in-depth resources, you can check out these guides:

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Have a favorite quote that we missed? If you know of more cool quotes by writers, write them in the comments!

2 responses

Brian Welte says:

08/05/2019 – 12:28

Here's a quote I absolutely adore: "The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere" [Quote from Gustave Flaubert]

Comments are currently closed.

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91 creative writing quotes by 62 great authors

I’m a pretty terrible writer, but I write a lot. Every single day. And I want to get better at it. Maybe you’re in the same boat, and if that’s the case—this is for you. You see, I read a lot about writing. You know, I read what writers who actually write good stuff write about creative writing. Tens of thousands of pages, almost a hundred books, countless articles, blog posts, interviews… and here are my favorite creative writing quotes, kind of categorized in a way that (hopefully) makes it easy for you to find the ones that are most meaningful to you at any given time. Here we go:

Table of Contents

Creative writing quotes on the importance of consistent practice

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that—the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is … curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don’t think the talent makes much difference, whether you’ve got that or not. —William Faulkner

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. —Steven King

This is how you do it: You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard. —Neil Gaiman

The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis. —William Zinsser

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

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised. —John Steinbeck

Related reads:

• 18 strategies to build a winning writing habit
• how to be consistent

Creative writing quotes that acknowledge the writer’s quirkiness and imperfection

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. —Douglas Adams

Every writer I know has trouble writing. —Joseph Heller

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. —Thomas Mann

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying. —Oscar Wilde

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. —Cesar A. Cruz

Creative writing quotes on technique

The key to all story endings is to give the audience what it wants, but not in the way it expects. —William Goldman

Time passes, as the novelist says. The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable. The narrator’s mother carries her child up the stairs and the reader follows, for days. But World War I passes in a paragraph. I needed 125 pages to get from Labor Day to Christmas vacation. In six more words, here’s spring. —Richard Powers, Generosity: An Enhancement

Description begins in the writer’s imagination but should finish in the readers’s. —Stephen King

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away – even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. —Kurt Vonnegut

Creative writing quotes on beginnings

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. —Anne Lamont

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. —Louis L’Amour

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page. —Jodi Picoult

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering. —Robert Frost

The scariest moment is always just before you start. —Stephen King

Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It’s discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages minus 100 to zero of the novel. —Barbara Kingsolver

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. —Terry Pratchett

I know very dimly when I start what’s going to happen. I just have a very general idea, and then the thing develops as I write. —Aldous Huxley

There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you. —Beatrix Potter

Creative writing quotes on the (non-) rules of writing

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. —W. Somerset Maugham

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly: sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges. —Ernest Hemingway

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. —Stephen King

If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule – a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last. —John Steinbeck

A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave. —Oscar Wilde

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons… All they do is show you’ve been to college. —Kurt Vonnegut

Creative writing quotes on what to write about

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. —C.S. Lewis

When all else fails, write what your heart tells you. You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. —Mark Twain

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. —Virginia Woolf

When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. —George Orwell

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. 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

That is the mission of art – to make us pause and look at a thing a second time. —Oscar Wilde

To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be. —Ayn Rand

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. —John Steinbeck

One of the best ways to come up with great ideas is to come up with a lot of ideas. I do this by keeping a creative journal. If you are curious about this, check out my creative journal ideas .

I also write morning pages which I find incredibly helpful in getting my creative juices flowing. Check out my morning pages prompts .

Creative writing quotes on persistence

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. —Richard Bach

The ability to go anywhere in our imagination is a pure expression of individual freedom. It is a creative force that can help us transcend reality. —Esther Perel (check out more Esther Perel quotes )

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper. —E.B. White

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. —F. Scott Fitzgerald

Creative writing quotes on inspiration

If you wait for inspiration to write you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter. —Dan Poynter

I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning. —William Faulkner

Sometimes the ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It’s a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works. I like a mystery, as you may have noticed. —J.K. Rowling

Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way. —Ray Bradbury

Creative writing quotes on dealing with doubt

Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself. —Mark Twain

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death. —Steven Pressfield

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

One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions. —Anton Chekhov

Creative writing quotes on perfectionism

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

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

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. —Brené Brown

He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things. —Anton Chekhov

Creative writing quotes on being prolific and doing the work

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor. —Edgar Rice Burroughs

Don’t ‘be a writer.’ Be writing. —William Faulkner

Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got. —Philip José Farmer

I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. ‘The first thing,’ I said, ‘is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.’ —Aldous Huxley

Write while the heat is in you. … The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. —Henry David Thoreau

The most important thing in writing is to have written. I can always fix a bad page. I can’t fix a blank one. —Nora Roberts

Write, write, write-till your fingers break. —Anton Chekhov

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not. —Aldous Huxley

Creative writing quotes on the importance of reading

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. —Stephen King

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers. —Ray Bradbury

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

There’s no better teacher for writing than reading… Get a library card. That’s the best investment. —Alisa Valdes

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book. —Samuel Johnson

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them. —Oscar Wilde

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river. —Lisa See

Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write. —Annie Proulx

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you. —Stephen King

A great novel, rather than discouraging me, simply makes me want to write. —Madeleine L’Engle

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. —Oscar Wilde

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all. —Oscar Wilde

If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you. —Natalie Goldberg

The proper study of mankind is books. —Aldous Huxley

There is creative reading as well as creative writing. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Creative writing quotes on the need to write

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. —Isaac Asimov

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes. —Franz Kafka

If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. —Toni Morrison

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else. —Gloria Steinem

There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people’s books and write your own. —Albert Einstein

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. —Maya Angelou

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

A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity. —Toni Morrison

I write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. If my work pleases the few I am gratified. As for the mob, I have no desire to be a popular novelist. It is far too easy. —Oscar Wilde

I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. —Anne Frank

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves. —Aldous Huxley

Creative writing can be a difficult and sometimes intimidating process. It requires not only imagination and skill, but also the willingness to let go of the expected and to embrace the unknown. It can be a challenging and daunting task, but it can also be incredibly rewarding and even transformative when you overcome creative blocks . As the great American writer Ernest Hemingway once wrote, There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

It’s creative writing quotes like these that I sometimes find more impactful than actual writing advice. And there are some great movies about writing that can help you get your creative juices flowing. (That might be one of the reasons why my writing is still so bad, despite the enormous amounts of time and energy I’ve dedicated to becoming a good writer.)

The creative writing process can often be one of trial and error. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and it can take a lot of hard work and dedication to reach a satisfaction level with one’s work.  In fact, you could try to make social media a place for your creative writing outlet. Maybe post some inspirational quotes for writers on X, or whatever your social network of choice is, and post your own commentary to it.

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75 Inspiring Writing Quotes From The World’s Best & Greatest Writers

• March 7, 2022

Whether you are a beginner writer or have been working on your craft for years already, reading some words of inspiration and wisdom is always helpful. Writing can be both incredibly satisfying and, at the same time, frustrating when you experience writer’s block. However, if you love to write, you know that creative blocks are simply a part of the process. If you are a professional writer, you know how heavy the process can be, but the satisfaction of getting your thoughts and ideas on the page with clarity and impact is such a joy.

In this article, we have included some inspiring, motivating, thoughtful, and creative ideas to overcome that writers block and get your creative juices flowing, from some of the world’s most renowned novelists such as Stephen King and Haruki Murakami to classic writers such as Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Below we have included writing quotes for inspiration and motivation, quotes for students and beginner writers, quotes about bad writing, and quotes about nonfiction writing. So, no matter your niche, you will find something below to get your mind working and your heart ready for the page.

Quotes About Writing

“You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of job: It’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.” – Neil Gaiman

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” – Somerset Maugham

“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. So 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.” – Walt Whitman

Writing and Reading Quotes

“Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” – Annie Proulx

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time to write. Simple as that.” – Stephen King

“For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.” – Eudora Welty

“The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.” – Ernest Gaines

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” – Stephen King

Writing Quotes for Students

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” – Robert Frost

“It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.” – P.D. James

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative .” – Elmore Leonard

“I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.” – Harper Lee

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” – Terry Pratchett

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” – Frank Herbert

“I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts, so it doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever because there’s a 90 percent chance I’m just going to delete whatever I write anyway. I find this hugely liberating.” – John Green

 “I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them — without a thought about publication — and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.” – Anne Tyler

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” – Mark Twain

“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

“ Start writing, no matter what . The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” – Louis L’Amour

“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

“Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.” – Ray Bradbury

“ Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” – Jane Yolen

Writing Motivation Quotes

 “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison

 “Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.” – Stephen King

“Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.” – Mark Twain

“When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come. I don’t choose what kind of story it is or what’s going to happen.” – Haruki Murakami

“I believe myself that a good writer doesn’t really need to be told anything except to keep at it.” – Chinua Achebe

“When I sit down to write a book , I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” – George Orwell

“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.” – Natalie Goldberg

“The story must strike a nerve in me. My heart should start pounding when I hear the first line in my head. I start trembling at the risk.” – Susan Sontag

“If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.” – Dan Poynter

“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

 “You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page.” – Annie Proulx

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. . . . For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. . . . But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.” – Ira Glass

“[Be] willing to write really badly.” – Jennifer Egan

“Go inside where silence is. Stay there. Let words bubble up.” – Maxime Lagacé

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” – Jack Kerouac

“My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart.” – Haruki Murakami

“Find your best time of the day for writing. Don’t let anything else interfere. Afterward, it won’t matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.” – Esther Freud

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E. L. Doctorow

“Write while the heat is in you… The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with.” – Henry David Thoreau

“A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.” – E.B. White

“A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, ‘Hey, this is no time for sleeping! You can’t forget me, and there’s still more to write!’ Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.” – Haruki Murakami

“You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.” – Haruki Murakami

“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 Card

“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

“I hate writing, I love having written.” – Dorothy Parker

“You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.” – Jennifer Egan

“I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.” – Gore Vidal

“I know how fiction matters to me because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.” – Haruki Murakami

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” – Stephen King

“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 the only thing you have to offer.” – Barbara Kingsolver

“Nonfiction speaks to the head. Fiction speaks to the heart. Poetry speaks to the soul. It’s the essence of beauty. The essence of pain. It pleases the eye and the ear.” – Ellen Hopkins

“Every writer I know has trouble writing.” – Joseph Heller

“Write at a pace that doesn’t surpass your creative flow. Don’t be hasty; don’t be sloppy. Don’t forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and you’ll find that it is harder to make bad writing good than to make good writing better.” – Richelle E. Goodrich

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” – Kurt Vonnegut

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” – Anais Nin

Quotes About Bad Writing

“Bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do― to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.” – Stephen King

“True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery, and there are many mysteries, but incompetence is not one of them, nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic quality. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.” – Ernest Hemingway

“A person who wrote badly did better than a person who does not write at all. A bad writing can be corrected. An empty page remains an empty page.” – Israelmore Ayivor

“If you open a book and find that the writer is trying to impress you with his knowledge of long, unusual words or by his use of foreign phrases, close the book quickly with no sense of loss or of deficiency or of having missed anything; for the author has not learned how to write and perhaps never will, and there is no need for you to offer yourself as a sounding board for his incompetence.” – Burton Rascoe

Quotes About Nonfiction Writing

“Nonfiction means that our stories are as true and accurate as possible. Readers expect – demand – diligence.” – Lee Gutkind

“I think the goal with any writing, but especially narrative nonfiction is to put the blockade of putting your thoughts in this unnatural medium of print and then to try to reach through that and actually convey what’s going on, what you think, and make people laugh and recognize themselves while doing it. Definitely the laughing thing.” – Sloane Crosley

“The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.” – Simon Schama

“Truth is stranger than nonfiction. And life is too interesting to be left to journalists. People have stories, but journalists have ‘takes,’ and it’s their takes that usually win out when the stories are too complicated or, as happens, not complicated enough.” – Walter Kirn

“I wanted to write about looking at the world, so it’s more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvelous and the terrible.” – John Berger

Quotes About Writer’s Block

“Writer’s block is a misnomer and can be compared with turning off a faucet. Like the ability to write, faucets can develop problems when they’re seldom used. You get all this rust in the pipes. When you turn on the faucet, a lot of rust comes out.” – Susan Neville

“Don’t stop because you’ve hit a block. Finish the page, even if you write nothing but your own name. The block will break if you don’t give in to it. Remember, writing is a physical habit as well as whatever you want to think it is—calling, avocation, talent, genius, art.” – Isabelle Holland

“Writer’s block is the biggest myth out there. The idea that you’re just lost for any possible words isn’t some vague illness that strikes people when they’re trying to be creative. You’re not missing the words; you’re missing the research. All ideas are a combination of preexisting ideas. So if you’re “out” of new ideas it’s probably because you don’t have enough old ideas to combine. Go back and read more. Or spend more time mapping out the book. Don’t show up to the keyboard without a plan, and then tell the world you have writer’s block. You’re lying to us, and to yourself.” – David Burkus

“When I have writer’s block, it is because I have not done enough research or I have not thought hard enough about the subject about which I’m writing. That’s a signal for me to go back to the archives or to go back into my thoughts and think through what it is I am supposed to be doing.” – Annette Gordon-Reed

“Do you ever go into the bathroom and sit on the toilet when you don’t need to take a shit? Do you ever just sit there completely empty and sit there and push? No, you don’t. You go eat something, and then you live your life and what happens, happens. It’s the same thing with writing. If I don’t have an idea that I’m not absolutely terrified of losing, then I don’t bother to write.” – Chuck Palahniuk

“You can’t think yourself out of a writing block; you have to write yourself out of a thinking block.” – John Rogers

Hopefully, the long list of writing quotes above will help you take a step back and approach the page with a fresh perspective. Feel free to revisit the page and find a new quote to inspire you if you are ever stuck. On a final note, keep writing. Some days you will flow like a waterfall, and some days, you will not. Still, do not let the ebb and flow of creativity discourage you from pursuing your craft.

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20 Inspiring Quotes for Writers to Fuel Creativity

Boost your writing inspiration with the best collection of inspiring quotes for writers. Read on to find the most thought-provoking and motivating words to spark your creativity and keep you motivated. Writing can be a challenging task, even for the most experienced writers. There are times you might feel stuck, uninspired, or unmotivated. But don’t worry; you’re not alone. 

Whether you’re struggling to start your first draft or searching for the perfect ending to your story, inspiring quotes for writers can provide you with the guidance and inspiration you need . Most writers have been in your shoes, and many have found ways to overcome these uncreative downturns. One of the best ways to rekindle your inspiration and motivation is by reading inspiring quotes for writers. These quotes can help you find the right words, inspire new ideas, and keep you motivated to keep writing.  Below is a list of the most inspiring quotes for writers to help you find the inspiration you need to push through writer’s block.

Inspiring Quotes for Writers

From famous authors to modern-day poets, the world is full of inspiring quotes for writers to help them overcome self-doubt and procrastination. Check out The Reliable Narrator’s picks below.

1. The scariest moment is always just before you start. – Stephen King

It can be scary to take the first put words down on paper, especially when you’re not sure if they will be good enough. However, King’s quote serves as a reminder that this fear is normal but temporary. Once you start writing, that fear dissipates, and the words begin to flow. The anticipation of starting can be the scariest part. Incorporating inspiring quotes for writers into a writing routine can help writers stay focused and inspired throughout the creative process. These motivational words can help push through the fear and roadblocks.

2. 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

For Whedon, writing is a way to overcome personal fears and limitations. Through his writing, he can become the characters he wishes he could be and explore the things that scare him the most. There is a lot to learn from his words – that’s the power of inspiring quotes for writers.

Writing can be a way to express feelings, work through emotions, and connect with others. It’s a way to explore the many different facets of the human experience and to connect with readers on a deeper level. Ultimately, we create worlds and characters that reflect some part of ourselves. 

3. A word after a word after a word is power. – Margaret Atwood

Every word writers choose has the potential to make a difference, inspire, educate, and connect with others. Atwood’s quote highlights the importance of persistence and dedication when it comes to writing. 

It can be a slow and challenging process, but every word we put on paper has the power to shape our ideas, our stories, and our world. The beauty of these inspiring quotes for writers is their ability to remind. Atwood’s quote is a reminder that even if we can only write a few words a day, those words are still significant and can accumulate to create something truly powerful.

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4. you fail only if you stop writing. – ray bradbury.

Writing is a journey that requires persistence, determination, and a willingness to keep going even when things get tough . Failure is not the end of the road. Sometimes all it takes is a few words from a favorite author to reignite the passion for writing. That’s the power of inspiring quotes for writers.

Many writers face rejection, criticism, and self-doubt throughout their careers. Failure is not the opposite of success but rather a necessary part of the creative process. Every mistake, every rejection, and every struggle is an opportunity to learn and grow. By continuing to write, writers are moving forward and growing. 

5. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. – Maya Angelou

As human beings, we all have stories to tell, whether they are personal anecdotes, historical accounts, or works of fiction. As writers, we know how keeping these stories inside us can weigh us down. Sharing our stories with others can help us find healing, connection, and meaning. Writing can be a solitary and challenging pursuit, but the right words of inspiration can help you stay the course. Seek out and embrace inspiring quotes for writers along the way. Your words may inspire the next generation of writers.

6. If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. – Toni Morrison

When we write stories featuring diverse characters and perspectives, we can help create a more inclusive and understanding world. Ultimately, Morrison’s quote reminds us that writing is about more than entertainment or self-expression. It’s about creating something that resonates with readers and has the potential to change the world. Reading inspiring quotes for writers can ignite the spark of creativity and motivate you to pick up your pen and paper.

7. The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. – Terry Pratchett

Writing can be a daunting process, and the pressure to create something polished and perfect can sometimes stifle a writer’s creativity. To overcome this hurdle, it is important for writers to remember the role of a first draft.

The first draft is an opportunity for writers to get their ideas on paper and explore different elements of their writing. It’s a time to experiment with characters, plot twists, and themes without worrying too much about getting everything right.

Of course, the first draft is only the beginning of the process. Editing and revision are crucially important. But by viewing the first draft as a starting point rather than a finished product, writers can free themselves to take risks and create something unique and impactful.

8. The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. – Robert Cormier

Unlike brain surgery, writing offers the luxury of being able to revise and edit one’s work until it’s right. Writing is not an exact science- there is no one “right” way to do it. This means that writers have the freedom to experiment, take risks, and make mistakes along the way.

Cormier’s inspirational quotes for writers remind us that writing is a craft that takes time, effort, and a willingness to learn and grow. But with patience, persistence, and a willingness to take risks and make mistakes, writers can produce work that is truly beautiful and meaningful.

9. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. – Sylvia Plath

Self-doubt can be a paralyzing force , preventing writers from trying new things and fully expressing themselves on the page. It can make even the most talented writers feel inadequate and unworthy of success.

Self-doubt is not a necessary part of the creative process. In fact, it can be the thing that holds writers back from achieving their full potential. By learning to recognize and confront self-doubt, writers can push past their fears and create work that is truly inspiring and meaningful.

Incorporating inspiring quotes for writers into your writing routine can help you stay focused and inspired throughout the creative process.

10. You can make anything by writing. – C.S. Lewis

Whether it’s a story, a poem, an essay, or a memoir, writing has the ability to create something new. Through the written word, writers can explore their own experiences and emotions, share their perspectives on the world, and connect with readers in profound and meaningful ways. Writing can also be a powerful tool for advocacy, education, and social change, as it allows writers to share their ideas and inspire others to take action.

Ultimately, C.S. Lewis’ inspiring quotes for writers speak to the limitless potential of writing as a form of expression and creation. With the power of words, writers have the ability to shape the world in their own unique way. 

11. Write what should not be forgotten. – Isabel Allende

Writers have the ability to preserve memories, traditions, and experiences that might otherwise fade away with time. This is the essence of inspiring quotes for writers – to inspire us to tell the stories that need to be told. It’s an invitation to explore the world and shine a light on the things that matter most.

12. Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. – Anton Chekhov

It’s not enough to simply tell the reader what’s happening; writers must also paint a vivid picture of the scene with words . Chekhov’s quote is a reminder to pay attention to the details and to use them to create a sensory experience for the reader. This is the beauty of inspiring quotes for writers – they offer insights and guidance that can help us improve our craft.

13. There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” – Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s quote suggests writing is a deeply personal and often painful experience, but it’s also an essential one. His quote is a reminder that writing can be difficult and challenging, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. Inspiring quotes for writers like this one can help us embrace the struggle and find meaning in the process.

14. 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. – Octavia Butler

Writing is a skill that takes time to develop, and it’s important to give allow for mistakes along the way. Butler’s quote is an encouragement to keep going , even when writers feel like their writing isn’t up to par. Inspiring quotes for writers like this one can help us maintain a growth mindset and stay focused on our goals.

15. The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. – Stephen King

As writers, sensitive or uncomfortable subjects can be difficult to discuss, and it’s important to approach these topics with care and respect. King’s quote is a reminder that the most important stories are often the most difficult to tell and are also the ones that can have the greatest impact. Inspiring quotes for writers like this one can help us find the courage to tackle tough subjects and use our writing to effect change.

Many successful authors credit inspiring quotes for writers as the fuel that helped them achieve their writing goals.

16. There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. – W. Somerset Maugham

17. i write entirely to find out what i’m thinking, what i’m looking at, what i see and what it means. what i want and what i fear. – joan didion, 18. the role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. – anaïs nin, 19. the pen is mightier than the sword. – edward bulwer-lytton, 20. good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. – e.l. doctorow.

In conclusion, inspiring quotes for writers can help fuel creativity and provide motivation to keep writing. Writing can be a challenging process, and it’s important to remember that even the best writers face self-doubt and struggle with their craft. But these inspiring quotes for writers serve as a reminder that the act of writing itself is powerful and can lead to incredible things. Whether it’s Isabel Allende’s reminder to write what should not be forgotten, or Ernest Hemingway’s famous inspiring quote for writers about bleeding onto the page, they capture the essence of what it means to be a writer. They encourage us to embrace our unique voices, persevere through tough times, and always strive for improvement. So the next time you’re feeling stuck or overwhelmed in your writing journey, take a moment to reflect on these inspiring quotes for writers. Allow them to fuel your creativity, spark new ideas, and remind you of the incredible power that words can hold. And most importantly, remember that as a writer, you have the ability to make a difference in the world through your words.

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50+ Inspiring Quotes About Writing and Writers

by Joe Bunting | 6 comments

The best way to become a better writer is to write   and then to  publish   your writing, whether you publish it on a blog, in a book, or with a close friend. It's only by practicing writing, and getting feedback on it, that you can improve.

That being said, it never hurts to learn from those who have gone before you, and over the years, we've compiled a lot of excellent advice from the best writers on how to become a better writer.

My Top 5 Writing Quotes:

“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of job: It's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.” —Neil Gaiman

• “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” —Somerset Maugham
• “Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.” —Gloria Steinem
• “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” —Anais Nin
• “Get through a draft as quickly as possible.” —Joshua Wolf Shenk

Favorite Quotes from Writers in Our Community

I asked authors in our community for their favorite quotes on writing or being a writer, and here's what they sent me.

1. How You Write a Book, According to Neil Gaiman

From Carole Wolfe, author of  My Best Mistake ,  and M MacKinnon, author of  The Comyn's Curse :

2. Why We Write, According to Walt Whitman

From Melanie Lambert, author of Wonder Woman in Disguise :

“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. So 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.”

― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

3. What You Must Write, According to Toni Morrison

From Michelle Dalton, author of  Epona , and Joslyn Chase, author of  Steadman's Blind :

4. How to Write the Right Word, According to Mark Twain

From Ichabod Ebenezer, author of  A Shadow Stained in Blood :

5. What Writing Is, According to Isaac Asimov

From Jeff Elkins, author of  Grab :

6. On the Path to Writing Success, According to Octavia E. Butler

From S.J. Henderson, author of  Daniel the Drawer :

“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

7. Why We Doubt Our Own Writing, According to Ira Glass

From Ross Boone, author of  The Absent Landlord : 

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. . . . For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. . . . But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.” —Ira Glass

8. Why Writing Requires Empathy, According to John Barth (and Sarah Gribble)

From Sarah Gribble, author of  The Hike :

“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.” John Barth

In other words:

More Favorite Writing Quotes

Need more writing quotes? Read on for more of our favorites:

9. Why You Became a Writer, According to Gloria Steinem

10. Why You Became a Writer, According to George Orwell

“[You write out of the] desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, etc., etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive and a strong one.” —George Orwell

11. Why You Became a Writer, According to Anaïs Nin

12. That Doesn't Mean Writing Is Easy

13. Start Writing Now

Need more grammar help?  My favorite tool that helps find grammar problems and even generates reports to help improve my writing is ProWritingAid . Works with Word, Scrivener, Google Docs, and web browsers. Also, be sure to use my coupon code to get 25 percent off:  WritePractice25

14. And Write Quickly

15. what to write about.

“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.” —Natalie Goldberg

16. Be Willing to Write Badly

17. Don't Doubt Yourself

18. All Great Writers Are a Little Crazy

“The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis.” —William Styron

19. The Only Way to Fail As a Writer…

20. Just Write One True Sentence

21. Just Write Something Simple

22. Your Big Ideas are Worthless

23. Really  Worthless

(I don't consider myself the equal of George R.R. Martin, Ernest Hemingway, or Sylvia Plath… yet… but this quote seemed important to include.)

24. Don't Let Anything Interfere With Your Writing

“Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don't let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won't matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.” —Esther Freud

25. Keep At It

“I believe myself that a good writer doesn't really need to be told anything except to keep at it.” —Chinua Achebe

26. Write Even When the World is Chaotic

27. The Mark of a Master Writer

“The mark of a master is to select only a few moments but to give us a lifetime.” —Robert McKee

28. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

29. stay drunk on writing.

30. Writing is like kissing

31. Don't Make a Chore for Your Readers

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads.” —Dr. Seuss

32. Show, Don't Tell

33. How to Develop Your Own Style

34. Writing is More Difficult for Us

35. No One Knows the Rules

36. The best way to become a writer

37. Always Listen to Ben Franklin

38. Your Words Have Power

39. Chase Your Dream

40. Writing in the Dark

41. Turn the Monsters Loose

42. Stories Are All Around You

43. Write Now

44. The Secret Professional Writers Know

45. Follow Your Hero

46. Exercise Your Writing Muscle

47. But Actually, Exercise Your Writing Muscle

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” —Jane Yolen

48. Your Writing Is Your Strength

49. The Real Challenge: Avoiding Distraction

50. Just Tell a Story

“I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.” —Edgar Rice Burroughs

51. Perseverance Is Key

52. Your Villains Think They've Got it Right

53. Write First, Edit Later

54. Your Hero's Job

55. Plan, Then Adjust

56. Read, Read, Then Read Some More

57. How to Keep Your Readers Hooked

Which quote is your favorite?  Let us know in  the comments .

Write something worth reading! Spend fifteen minutes free writing or working on a work in progress. As you write, channel the advice from the great writers above.

When your time is up, post your practice in the Pro Practice Workshop  and encourage each other with your own writing wisdom! 

Happy writing!

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

This happened while I was working on the day I wrote this. Since the prompt was so open ended, I decided to write about the tough day. I don’t really know why I chose not to give him a name; it’s just something I felt like trying.

Good job, mama. Magical times. Do you create bedtime stories for your son? My son (who is 13 now) used to tell me, “Mama, make up a story for me.” I was terrible at it. If that’s something you can do, even if you aren’t able to write them down, that will be your writing practice for the day AND an amazing connection with and gift for your son. Also, be sure to relish in his language development; this is the perfect time to notice his amazing leaps forward. If you haven’t explored using sign language with little kids, it’s a lot of fun and a great way to support their language development. If you have a moment (yeah, right, didn’t you hear I have a two-year-old?), check out http://www.signingtime.com/company/about-us/story/

Thanks for the wonderful tips. I think making up stories for your child is a great idea. I did try a little signing with my son, unfortunately, I didn’t get past the first ten essentials. I was actually hoping to learn this new language with him, but I didn’t fight hard enough for it. Of course, it’s never too late to start again. Thanks!

I really liked this, David! It flows very easily “Writing free or freely writingIs writing ever really free?” I love that! Writing has a cost, a cost that’s worth it.

-Spring Storm-

Raindrops hit my window and glide down the glass. A flash of lighting. A roar of thunder. The evergreen tree sways in the wind. The weather alarm sounds its obnoxious alert; there’s a hail advisory. The trees in the distance are gray and blurred against the rain-hazed sky. A lone leaf spirals to the ground. pitter patter… A thousand tiny hailstones land on the fresh spring grass and clink against my window. The window is smeared as if I’m wearing someone else’s glasses. A car drives up the street, water spraying from under its tires. The rain falls gently now. The grass brightens and puddles of water dot the yard. There’s a pastel blue sky. Soft. Hopeful. The storm has left me.

Yes, Chekhov the best advice.

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138 Quotes About Writing by the Most Inspiring Authors of All Time

Writing is a craft that has captivated, inspired, and frustrated people throughout history, and some of the greatest minds of all time have left behind words of wisdom on the subject. From novelists to poets, playwrights to essayists, the world’s most inspiring authors have shared their insights in the form of writing quotes, providing guidance and inspiration to aspiring writers everywhere.

In the following you will discover a stunning collection with the best quotes about the art of writing. Whether you’re looking for tips on how to improve your craft, or seeking motivation to keep going in the face of obstacles, these quotes are sure to inspire and guide you on your writing journey.

Writing Process

The writing process can be both exhilarating and challenging, and every writer has their own unique approach to it. The following quotes offer a few ideas on how some great minds in literature approach the craft of writing and may provide guidance to those seeking to improve the process for themselves.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

― Ernest Hemingway (about)

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

― E.L. Doctorow (about)

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”

― Kurt Vonnegut (about)

“It may be observed of good writing, as of good blood, that it is much easier to say what it is composed of than to compose it.”

― Charles Caleb Colton (about)

“Writing is a manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.”

― John Gregory Dunne (about)

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”

― Stephen King (about)

“Write drunk, edit sober.”

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.”

― Anne Lamott (about)

“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 (about)

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

― George Orwell (about)

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”

― Margaret Atwood (about)

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”

“What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.”

― Edward Abbey (about)

“I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them — without a thought about publication — and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.”

― Anne Tyler (about)

“Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

― David Foster Wallace (about)

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Inspiration & Creativity

Inspiration and creativity are the lifeblood of writing, and without them, the written word would lack the power to move, inspire, and connect with readers. The quotes in this section express the insights of some great authors and may provide inspiration to writers seeking to tap into their own creative potential.

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

― Sylvia Plath (about)

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”

― Saul Bellow (about)

“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 Card (about)

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”

― John Steinbeck (about)

“Sometimes the ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It’s a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works. I like a mystery, as you may have noticed.”

― J.K. Rowling (about)

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

― Louis L’Amour (about)

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”

“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.”

― William Faulkner (about)

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

― Jack London (about)

“Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.”

― Philip José Farmer (about)

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”

― Ray Bradbury (about)

“All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”

― Jorge Luis Borges (about)

“Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the ‘creative bug’ is just a wee voice telling you, ‘I’d like my crayons back, please.”

― Hugh MacLeod (about)

“Write what should not be forgotten.”

― Isabel Allende (about)

Storytelling

At the heart of every great piece of writing lies a compelling story. Whether it’s a novel, a play, or a poem, the power of storytelling is what captures readers’ imaginations and keeps them engaged from start to finish. The following insights provide a glimpse into how some of the greatest storytellers in history approach their craft, and may motivate you to create your own captivating narratives.

“A good story is a dream shared by the author and the reader. Anything that wakes the reader from the dream is a mortal sin.”

― Victor J. Banis (about)

“Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.”

― Neil Gaiman (about)

“I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.”

― Tom Clancy (about)

“There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn’t because the book is not there and worth being written — it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and, if you fail to find that form, the story will not tell itself.”

― Mark Twain (about)

“In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it ‘got boring,’ the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.”

“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 (about)

“If you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you’re at it? Go ahead. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It’s easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you’re supposed to be doing: telling a good story.”

― Patrick Rothfuss (about)

“All stories are about wolves. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.”

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

― Philip Pullman (about)

“The story must strike a nerve in me. My heart should start pounding when I hear the first line in my head. I start trembling at the risk.”

― Susan Sontag (about)

“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”

― Voltaire (about)

“All stories have to at least try to explain some small portion of the meaning of life.”

― Gene Weingarten (about)

“Writing controlled fiction is called “plotting.” Buckling your seatbelt and letting the story take over, however… that is called “storytelling.” Storytelling is as natural as breathing; plotting is the literary version of artificial respiration.”

“What monster sleeps in the deep of your story? You need a monster. Without a monster there is no story.”

― Billy Marshall (about)

Revision & Editing

Writing is a process of constant refinement, and every writer knows that revision and editing are crucial steps in the journey from the messy first draft to the brilliant final product. Have a look at these quotes from some accomplished authors on the art of, and need for, revising and editing.

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

“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.”

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. […] All they do is show you’ve been to college.”

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald (about)

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

― Jodi Picoult (about)

“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shovelling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”

― Shannon Hale (about)

“On first drafts: It is completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut — it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts.”

“You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.”

― William S. Burroughs (about)

“I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts, so it doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever, because there’s a 90 percent chance I’m just going to delete whatever I write anyway. I find this hugely liberating.”

― John Green (about)

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

― Terry Pratchett (about)

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

“I’ve found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it.”

― Don Roff (about)

“When your story is ready for a 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.”

“If you show someone something you’ve written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.”

― David Mitchell (about)

“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”

“It was like removing layers of crumpled brown paper from an awkwardly shaped parcel, and revealing the attractive present which it contained.”

― Diana Athill (about)

“Editing might be a bloody trade, but knives aren’t the exclusive property of butchers. Surgeons use them too.”

― Blake Morrison (about)

“Making love to me is amazing. Wait, I meant: making love, to me, is amazing. The absence of two little commas nearly transformed me into a sex god.”

― Dark Jar Tin Zoo (about)

“No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.”

― Russell Lynes (about)

The Power of Language

Language has the power to move, inspire, and transform us. The quotes in this section reveal how great writers have harnessed the power of language to create works that resonate deeply with readers, and may inspire you to tap into the full potential of your own words.

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

― Anton Chekhov (about)

“Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt–I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt.”

― Cassandra Clare (about)

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”

― Aldous Huxley (about)

“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”

― James Michener (about)

“Ideas are cheap. It’s the execution that is all important.”

― George R.R. Martin (about)

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

― E. L. Doctorow (about)

“You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying in the road.”

― Richard Price (about)

“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel–it is, before all, to make you see.”

― Joseph Conrad (about)

“In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

― C.S. Lewis (about)

Characters & Dialogue

Compelling characters and engaging dialogue are essential elements of any great work of fiction. In this section, you will find quotes from some talented writers on the art of creating memorable characters and crafting realistic dialogue, which may inspire you to breathe life into your own fictional world.

“I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not.”

― Joss Whedon (about)

“Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”

“First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him.”

“The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented.”

― Milan Kundera (about)

“Don’t resist the urge to burn down the stronghold, kill off the main love interest or otherwise foul up the lives of your characters.”

― Patricia Hamill (about)

“You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.”

“Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.”

― Gore Vidal (about)

“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”

― Cornelia Funke (about)

“My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don’t have interesting characters and a good story to tell. ”

― Harold Ramis (about)

“Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.”

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”

“Let’s face it, characters are the bedrock of your fiction. Plot is just a series of actions that happen in a sequence, and without someone to either perpetrate or suffer the consequences of those actions, you have no one for your reader to root for, or wish bad things on.”

― Icy Sedgwick (about)

“Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.”

― John Banville (about)

“I don’t have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.”

― Maeve Binchy (about)

Writer’s Block

Writer’s block is a common and frustrating obstacle that many writers face at some point in their careers. These quotes express the thoughts of successful writers and may provide inspiration and guidance if you are struggling with your own bouts of creative paralysis.

“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.”

― Sidney Sheldon (about)

“You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless — there is only one thing to do with a novel and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.”

“Writer’s block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.”

― Steve Martin (about)

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”

― Isaac Asimov (about)

“Writer’s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something.”

“You fail only if you stop writing.”

“The cure for writer’s block is to write.”

“The writer’s block is just a failure of the ego.”

― Norman Mailer (about)

The Writer’s Life

The life of a writer is often romanticized, but it can also be challenging, isolating, and unpredictable. The following quotes on the joys and struggles of writing life may provide comfort and inspiration while you navigate your own creative journey.

“I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.”

“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke (about)

“Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil — but there is no way around them.”

“I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent, he would be wise to develop a thick hide.”

― Harper Lee (about)

“Writing is something you do alone. It’s a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don’t want to make eye contact while doing it.”

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”

― Richard Bach (about)

“Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.”

― Margaret Chittenden (about)

“Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.”

― Criss Jami (about)

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.”

― Virginia Woolf (about)

“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 (about)

“There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on.”

― E.B. White (about)

“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 (about)

“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.”

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.”

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”

― Eugène Ionesco (about)

“Work like hell! I had 122 rejection slips before I sold a story.”

“A writer who is a pro can take on almost any assignment, but if he or she doesn’t much care about the subject, I try to dissuade the writer, as in that case the book can be just plain hard labor.”

― Sterling Lord (about)

“A good writer refuses to be socialized. He insists on his own version of things, his own consciousness. And by doing so he draws the reader’s eye from its usual groove into a new way of seeing things.”

― Bill Barich (about)

“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.”

Writing & Reading

Writing and reading are two sides of the same coin, with each shaping and influencing the other. The quotes in this section provide some thoughts on the interplay between these two essential elements of literature, and may provide inspiration to writers and readers alike.

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

― Toni Morrison (about)

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

“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.”

“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 (about)

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”

― Robert Frost (about)

“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.”

― Lisa See (about)

“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 (about)

Discipline & Routine

Discipline and routine are key components of a successful writing practice, helping authors to stay focused, motivated, and productive. These quotes offer some insights on the ability to stay on track and may guide and inspire you to establish your own writing habits.

“A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”

― Anthony Trollope (about)

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”

― Octavia Butler (about)

“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 (about)

“Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine coal? They do not. They simply dig.”

― Cheryl Strayed (about)

“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing — writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.”

― Lawrence Block (about)

“It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.”

― Gerald Brenan (about)

“Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.”

“The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.”

― Augusten Burroughs (about)

“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.”

― Pearl S. Buck (about)

“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 (about)

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”

― Jane Yolen (about)

Funny & Cheerful

While writing can be a serious and challenging pursuit, it can also be infused with humor and joy. These lighthearted and witty quotes can provide a chuckle or two to writers in need of a little levity.

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

― Douglas Adams (about)

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

― W. Somerset Maugham (about)

“When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: ‘House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

“Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.”

― Flannery O’Connor (about)

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Writing Quotes: 101 Quotes for Writers to Inspire You

Need a little motivation to write? These 101 Quotes for Writers from best selling authors are sure to inspire you!

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Today I wanted to share a great round-up of my favorite writing quotes for writers, because sometimes it can be just that little bit of motivational inspiration you need to keep going.

An encouraging word from a published author is always reassurance that the madness of sitting at your laptop typing words for hours is worth the sacrifice!

We can also learn a lot about how to write from these famous author quotes included in this list of quotes about writing! Many of these quotes come from well known authors who share their best tips, advice, and secrets to learn all about writing.

While these quotes are no substitute for taking an online writing class, you’ll definitely find some inspiration here!

From tips for staying motivated to inspiring ideas for how to develop great characters in your writing, you are sure to find a lot of great writing advice to be found in these words of wisdom from successful authors!

Here are 101 Writing Quotes for Writers

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.” – Anne Lamott

“Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.” – Ayn Rand

“Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.” – W.H. Auden

“There are reasons people seek escape in books, and one of those reasons is that the boundary of what can happen is beyond what we do – or would want to see in real life.” – James Patterson

“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.” –  William H. Gass

“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

Writing Advice Quotes: Tips to Write Better from Writers

“Always be a poet, even in prose.” – Charles Baudelaire

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” – Frank Herbert

“I almost always urge people to write in the first person. … Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.” – William Zinsser

“First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!” –  Ray Bradbury

“There is only one plot — things are not what they seem.” – Jim Thompson

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” – Stephen King

“You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying in the road.” – Richard Price

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” – Robert Frost

“You always get more respect when you don’t have a happy ending.” – Julia Quinn

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” – Anton Chekhov

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” – Thomas Jefferson

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” – Maya Angelou

“The secret of good writing is telling the truth.” – Gordon Lish

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” – Jane Yolen

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” –  Dr. Seuss

Quotes About Creativity and Finding Inspiration as a Writer

“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” – Willa Cather

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.” – Ray Bradbury

“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

“I start with a question. Then try to answer it.” – Mary Lee Settle

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” – George Orwell

Hobbes: Do you have an idea for your story yet? Calvin: No, I’m waiting for inspiration. You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood. Hobbes: What mood is that? Calvin: Last-minute panic. – Bill Watterson

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” –  William Wadsworth

“Love is the only energy I’ve ever used as a writer. I’ve never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.” – Athol Fugard

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.” – Ernest Hemingway

“Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. … I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.” – Gore Vidal

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” – Oscar Wilde

“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 Card

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. 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.” – Ray Bradbury

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.” – Willa Cather

Quotes On Writing for Children

“Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won’t have as much censorship because we won’t have as much fear.” – Judy Blume

“I don’t believe that there’s a demarcation. ‘Oh, you mustn’t tell them that. You mustn’t tell them that.’ You tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it’s true. If it’s true, you tell them.” – Maurice Sendak

“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

“It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.” – Isaac Asimov

“Many adults feel that every children’s book has to teach them something…. My theory is a children’s book… can be just for fun.” – R.L. Stine

“In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked. Yet a child’s need for quietness is the same today as it has always been—it may even be greater—for quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.” – Margaret Wise Brown

“I know what I liked as a child, and I don’t do any book that I, as a child, wouldn’t have liked.” – H. A. Rey

“I’m very lucky to write for children, because I don’t have to deal with popular culture. I can just deal with core fundamental issues: jealousy, love, hatred, sadness, joy, wanting to drive a bus.” – Mo Willems

“I’ve always been into ‘fast-paced, don’t bore ’em, keep it moving along, stick with the story.’ You know: tell a story the way I want to hear a story. I find it more rewarding to write for kids, but I also find it a little easier, because you can just let loose a little bit more in terms of fantasy and stuff.” – James Patterson

Quotes from Writers About Reading and Books

You’ll probably notice a common theme about all of these next quotes from writers – if you wish to write a book, you better get reading! Here are some of our favorite quotes about reading and books from a variety of authors.

“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

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” – Stephen King

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” – J.D. Salinger

“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

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“One sure window into a person’s soul is his reading list.” – Mary B. W. Tabor

“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.” – Samuel Johnson

Motivational Quotes for Writers

“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

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” – Louis L’Amour

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” – Neil Gaiman

“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

“That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.” – Tim O’Brien

“You can make anything by writing.” – C.S. Lewis

“You can fix anything but a blank page.” – Nora Roberts

“Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk—away from any open flames—to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.” – George Singleton

“If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.” –  Edgar Rice Burroughs

“The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.” –  Neil Gaiman

Writing Quotes About Not Giving Up

These writing quotes about not giving up are a good thing to remember when you start submitting your manuscript to publishers ! It’s easy to want to give up, but it is worth the trials and tribulations to keep working at becoming a successful published author.

“Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself.” – Mark Twain

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” – Isaac Asimov

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” – Richard Bach

“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.” – Oscar Wilde

“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.” – Ernest Hemingway

“Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.” – Ralph Keyes

Writing Quotes About Editing and Revising

“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

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”  – Stephen King

“Half my life is an act of revision.” –  John Irving

“Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.” – Hunter S. Thompson

“Good writing is rewriting.” – Truman Capote

“Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil—but there is no way around them.” –  Isaac Asimov

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.” – C. J. Cherryh

“Most editors are failed writers – but so are most writers.” – T.S. Eliot

“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

More Great Quotes for Writers

“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

“I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.” – Isaac Asimov

“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.” – Roald Dahl

“Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.” – Carl Sagan

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.” – Lorrie Moore

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” – Anaïs Nin

“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

“A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.” – Jane Austen

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.” – Stephen King

“Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to.” – Sylvia Plath

“Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves.” – Alan W. Watts

“I don’t think of literature as an end in itself. It’s just a way of communicating something.” –   Isabel Allende

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” – Blaise Pascal

“A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibilities of their own souls.” – Walt Whitman

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin

“All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.” – E.B. White

“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

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

“There is no such thing as fantasy unrelated to reality.” – Maurice Sendak

“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.” – Sidney Sheldon

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” – Aldous Huxley

“I’m very lucky in that I don’t understand the world yet. If I understood the world, it would be harder for me to write these books.” — Mo Willems

“I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.” – Roald Dahl

What are your favorite writing quotes?

After reading these writing quotes, do you have a favorite? Which ones inspire you to start writing? Are there any quotes that offer writing tips you find useful? Are there any writing quotes you like that we may not have included on this list?

Your thoughts, comments, suggestions and ideas are always welcome in the comments section below!

Chelle Stein wrote her first embarrassingly bad novel at the age of 14 and hasn't stopped writing since. As the founder of ThinkWritten, she enjoys encouraging writers and creatives of all types.

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My favorite is probably “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” because it’s so true. I love writing. I’ve wanted to be a writer for, like, ten years, since I was five, but it’s taken me this long to really be serious about it. I’m very introverted. I will read, write, play with my cats, listen to music, and text my friends while sitting at a table or lying in bed all day, but ask me to go out to eat, or go shopping … No, thanks. I actually took an online test to see if I was introverted or extravereted (I obviously already knew the answer, but I LOVE online tests) and I got 97% introverted, 3% percent extraverted so if that tells you anything … Anyway. I also liked the quote about exclamation points. I can’t STAND exclamation points. Ask my mom or any of my friends … Well, I really don’t know why I wrote all this when I could’ve been working on my book and nobody’s probably going to read this anyway and if you do, you probably won’t care, or get this far. Imma go now. Bye…

My mother said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly until you can do it well.” That works with writing and so much more.

Great advice Diana, thank you!

“If you write, you’re a writer.” I encourage myself with that concept. I’m retired from the real world, and when people ask me what I do now, I say, “I’m a writer and look forward to the day I’m an author.” Thank you for these quotes on writing.

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The 100+ Most Famous Writing Quotes of All Time

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Renowned authors and imaginative minds have long been a fountain of encouragement and wisdom for those of us undertaking creative pursuits. When we’re craving a spark of motivation or a nugget of wisdom, a compelling quote can often light the way.

The masters of the written word have a unique way of distilling their vast experiences and profound insights into succinct, impactful statements. So, we've curated a collection of quotes that encapsulate the essence of inspiration, creativity, and the art of writing itself.

Whether you're in search of the perfect quote to share with a fellow writer or seeking inspirational words to boost your own creative journey, this collection is designed to ignite your passion for storytelling and spark your imagination.

Quotes about writing

• Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers — Isaac Asimov
• Home is the cats, my books, and my work never done — Patti Smith
• There is nothing at all to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed — Ernest Hemingway
• The only way to write is to write — John Steinbeck
• 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
• It’s terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfil other people’s expectations — David Bowie
• The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance — Aristotle
• Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand — George Orwell

Quotes on being a writer

• If you're writing, you're a writer — Neil Gaiman
• The terrible thing about being a writer is that you don’t decide to become one, you discover that you are one — James Baldwin
• The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself — Albert Camus
• I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear — Joan Didion
• The role of a writer is not to say all we can say, but what we are unable to say — Anaïs Nin
• The writer's job is to tell the truth — Ernest Hemingway
• One role of the writer today is to sound the alarm. The environment is disintegrating, the hour is late, and not much is being done — E.B White
• To name something truly is to lay bare what may be brutal or corrupt (or important or possible) and key to the work of changing the world is changing the story — Rebecca Solnit
• You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say — F. Scott Fitzgerald
• A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people — Thomas Mann
• Writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, it is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there — Gertrude Stein
• Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life — E.B. White
• A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave — Oscar Wilde

Famous quotes about creativity

• Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun — Mary Lou Cook
• Creativity is intelligence having fun — Albert Einstein
• Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work — Gustave Flaubert
• The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity — Glenn Gould
• Creativity is the combination of discipline and a childlike spirit — Robert Greene
• An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail — Dr Edwin Land
• Creativity takes courage — Henri Matisse
• I tell you: one must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star — From Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
• The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt — Sylvia Plath

Famous quotes on writing a book

• There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you — Maya Angelou
• There is something compelling about the blank page that beckons you in to write something on it. It must be filled — Margaret Atwood
• You’ve got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were — Ray Bradbury
• 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
• The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes — Agatha Christie
• Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go — E.L. Doctorow
• What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it, because there's nothing there to fix — Neil Gaiman
• You are ready. Start making stuff — Austin Kleon
• The scariest moment is always just before you start — Stephen King
• A blank page is also a door — it contains infinity, like a night sky with a supermoon really close to the Earth, with all the stars and the galaxies, where you can see very, very clearly… — David Mitchell
• Start with a phrase, a line, a quote. Questions are very helpful. Begin with a few you’re carrying right now — Naomi Shihab Nye
• I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally — JRR Tolkien

Inspirational writing quotes

• I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by — Douglas Adams
• Be not afraid of going slowly, be afraid of standing still — Chinese Proverb
• Don't be a writer; be writing — William Faulkner
• Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead — Gene Fowler
• People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are — Steve Jobs
• It always seems impossible, until it's done — Nelson Mandela
• The depths are obscured in us when we try to force feelings; we clarify them by giving them adequate time and space and letting them come — Stephen Nachmanovich
• The first draft is just you telling yourself the story — Terry Pratchett
• Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar — E.B. White
• We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection — Anaïs Nin
• Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good — William Faulkner

Quotes about editing and revising a novel

• The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon — Robert Cormier
• Perfection is not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• In writing, you must kill all your darlings — William Faulkner
• Write drunk; edit sober — Ernest Hemmingway
• The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do — Thomas Jefferson
• The road to hell is paved with adverbs — Stephen King
• I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter — James Michener
• The most important thing in writing is to have written. I can always fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank one — Nora Roberts
• The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and a lightening bug — Mark Twain
• There's no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written — Oscar Wilde
• Usually I compose only with great difficulty and endless rewriting — JRR Tolkien
• There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are - W Somerset Maugham

Quotes about using emotion in your writing

• Learning the craft, understanding what language can do, gaining control of the language, enables one to make people weep, make them laugh… — Maya Angelou
• No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader — Robert Frost
• All romance books are about one theme: love conquers all... That journey from hole-hearted to whole-hearted is the romance arc for each character — Gwen Hayes
• Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh — Stephen King
• Novels ought to have hope; at least, American novels ought to have hope. French novels don't need to — Anne Lamott
• Our sense of enchantment is not triggered only by grand things... The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It becomes valuable when we value it — Katherine May
• A work responds to the reader’s, not the author’s, questions. Once written, the work has a life of its own distinct from that of its author, a life granted by its successive readers — Octavio Paz
• The best stories don't come from ‘good vs bad’, but from ‘good vs good’ — Leo Tolstoy
• Maybe we can’t draw flesh from reverie nor retrieve a dusty spur, but we can gather the dream itself and bring it back uniquely whole — Patti Smith
• Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works — Virginia Woolf

Quotes about mastering the writing craft

• A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit — Richard Bach
• My responsibility as a writer is to be as good as I can be at my craft — Maya Angelou
• Don't tell me the moon is shining: show me the glint of light on broken glass — Anton Chekhov
• A good writer is always a people watcher — Patricia Highsmith
• The only way to do great work is to love what you do — Steve Jobs
• If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write — Stephen King
• If you want to be a writer, you have to write. Everyday. No excuses — Walter Mosley
• In the exposition we put a pot of water on the stove; getting the action to rise is making the water boil — George Saunders
• A scene without conflict is a scene without tension... which is to say, a scene that gives us no reason to read it — Chuck Wendig
• I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide — Harper Lee
• It is a writer's greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others — Brandon Sanderson

Writing motivation quotes

• Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it — Maya Angelou
• I can't give you a sure fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time — Herbert Bayard Swope
• The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do — Steve Jobs
• If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete — Jack Kornfield
• The best way to predict your future is to create it — Abraham Lincoln
• Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner — Lao Tzu
• Do one thing everyday that scares you — Eleanor Roosevelt
• And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is’ — Kurt Vonnegut

Quotes about getting ideas

• Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats — Howard Aiken
• I don't need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me — Ray Bradbury
• Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to split open — Natalie Goldberg
• Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like — Paul Graham
• If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it — Toni Morrison
• A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter — E.B. White
• 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

Learning from the greats

For us, quotes from famous writers are like beacons guiding us through the writing process. Ernest Hemingway tells us to pour our feelings out. Antoine de Saint-Exupery teaches us to keep our stories simple, taking away anything that's not needed. Stephen King warns us to use our words carefully to make our writing strong. These tips show us how to become better writers. They tell us to trust our own way of writing and to keep learning and getting better. If these writers did it, so can you!

Writing philosophy in practice

When you read a lot of advice from different writers, you'll notice they don't all agree. Hemingway's idea of writing being tough doesn't quite match Stephen King's idea of it being an adventure. Flaubert liked things orderly, but Kerouac loved just letting ideas flow freely. That's okay, though. Writing is about finding what works for you.

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115 Inspirational Writing Quotes by Famous Authors

Writing can change lives. Many authors have found peace in writing and have been quoted conveying the magic they have found in writing. We wanted to share some of the most famous writing quotes with you. Thank you to Goodreads for the quotes.

“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” ― James Michener

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” ― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences” ― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” ― Mark Twain

“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 Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.” ― William H. Gass, A Temple of Texts

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” ― Winston S. Churchill

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Make up a story… For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.” ― Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993

“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

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” ― Stephen King

“Tears are words that need to be written.” ― Paulo Coelho

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” ― Robert Frost

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” ― John Steinbeck

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” ― Ernest Hemingway

“A word after a word after a word is power.” ― Margaret Atwood

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” ― Stephen King

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” ― Stephen King

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

“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.” ― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” ― Saul Bellow

“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

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” ― Albert Camus

“So what? All writers are lunatics!” ― Cornelia Funke, Inkspell

“Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.” ― Neil Gaiman

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” ― Frank Herbert

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.” ― Franz Kafka

“The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.” ― Anais Nin

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.” ― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” ― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” ― Jack London

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” ― Louis L’Amour

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.” ― Lorrie Moore

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” ― Anne Frank

“If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.” ― Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“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

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.” ― Lloyd Alexander

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” ― Anais Nin

“you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“One always has a better book in one’s mind than one can manage to get onto paper.” ― Michael Cunningham

“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.” ― Christopher Hitchens

“I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?” ― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?” ― Cornelia Funke

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” ― Henry David Thoreau

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” ― Toni Morrison

“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.” ― Hermann Hesse

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” ― Neil Gaiman

“You know, it’s hard work to write a book. I can’t tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.” ― Ellen DeGeneres, The Funny Thing Is…

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” ― Pablo Picasso

“”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

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” ― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“We live and breathe words. …. It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt–I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted–and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.” ― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“Always be a poet, even in prose.” ― Charles Baudelaire

“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

“Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.” ― Philip José Farmer

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.” ― Stephen King

“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.” ― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

“Write what should not be forgotten.” ― Isabel Allende

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.” ― Howard Nemerov

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” ― Philip Pullman

“Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.” ― Harvey Pekar

“This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be.” ― David Levithan, Every Day

“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

“The first draft of anything is shit.” ― Ernest Hemingway

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. 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. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” ― Ray Bradbury

“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.” ― Beatrix Potter

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” ― Stephen King

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” ― Stephen King

“Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.” ― John Cheever

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” ― Anton Chekhov

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ― Ernest Hemingway

“You can make anything by writing.” ― C.S. Lewis

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.” ― Virginia Woolf

“A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.” ― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“”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

“When you make music or write or create, it’s really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you’re writing about at the time. ” ― Lady Gaga

“By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer’s greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry…” ― Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.” ― Anais Nin

“People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don’t like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy.” ― Joss Whedon

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” ― William Wordsworth

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” ― George Orwell

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“”There are three rules for writing a novel . Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” ― W. Somerset Maugham

“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

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” ― Isaac Asimov

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” ― E.L. Doctorow

“That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.” ― Tim O’Brien

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” ― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.” ― Neil Gaiman

“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

“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

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time proof that humans can work magic.” ― Carl Sagan

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” ― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

“You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying in the road.” ― Richard Price

“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

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” ― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“You always get more respect when you don’t have a happy ending.” ― Julia Quinn

“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

“I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky. ” ― Sharon Olds

“Women want love to be a novel. Men, a short story.” ― Daphne du Maurier

“I hate writing, I love having written.” ― Dorothy Parker

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50 Inspirational Quotes on Writing

By barnes & noble press /, january 4, 2021 at 3:00 pm.

It’s a new year and, therefore, we want to help kick it off right with a collection of our favorite inspirational quotes on writing! We always start a new year with resolutions, but often it’s hard to stick with our goals. Certainly, that’s where we can come in 🙂

Above all, we hope these 50 Inspirational Quotes on Writing will keep you motivated and energized throughout 2021.

Inspirational Quotes on Writing: Imagination

2. “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” –  William Wordsworth

3. “The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

4. “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” –  Joan Didion

5. “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream by night.” – Edgar Allan Poe

6. “The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” –  Gustav Flaubert

7. “I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and look at it, until it shines.” –  Emily Dickinson

8. “That’s what you’re looking for as a writer when you’re working. You’re looking for your own freedom.” –  Philip Roth

9. “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” –  George Bernard Shaw

10. “Creativity is a combination of discipline and childlike spirit.” –  Robert Greene

11. “Writing is the painting of the voice.” –  Voltaire

12. “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” –  Paulo Coelho

13. “I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere and it can do anything.” –  Alice Walker

Inspirational Quotes on Writing: Motivation

14. “Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself… it’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless.” – Harper Lee

15. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” –  Henry David Thoreau

16. “There are significant moments in everyone’s day that can make literature. That’s what you ought to write about.” –  Raymond Carver

17. “Keep asking questions because people will always want to know the answer. Open with a question and don’t answer it until the end.” –  Lee Child

18. “But when people say, did you always want to be a writer? I have to say no! I always was a write.” –  Ursula K. Le Guin

19. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” –  Maya Angelou

20. “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” –  Margaret Atwood

21. “You should write stories because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page.” –  Annie Proulx

23. “If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart.” –  Terry Brooks

24. “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

25. “Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” –  Tom Stoppard

26. “The secret of it all is to write… without waiting for a fit time or place.” –  Walt Whitman

27. “No one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.” –  Charles de Lint

28. “Successful writing is one part inspiration and two parts sheer stubbornness.” –  Gillian Flynn

30. “As a writer, you should not judge. You should understand.” –  Ernest Hemingway

31. “If you don’t see the book you want on the shelf, write it.” – Beverly Cleary

32. “When all else fails, write what your heart tells you. You can’t depend on your eyes, when your imagination is out of focus.”  Mark Twain

33. “Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Make some light.” –  Kate DiCamillo

Inspirational Quotes on Writing: Process

34. “A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.” –  Junot Diaz

35. “The first draft is you just telling yourself the story.” –  Terry Pratchett

36. “Write a page a day. Only 300 words and in a year you have written a novel.” –  Stephen King

37. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” –  Agatha Christie

38. “The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.” –  Donna Tart

39. “Writing is an act of faith, not a grammar trick.” –  E.B. White

40. “Good stories are not written. They are rewritten.” –  Phyllis Whitney

41. “The first draft is a skeleton. Just bare bones. The rest of the story comes later with revising.” –  Judy Bloom

42. “When you are describing a shape, or sound, or tint, don’t state the matter plainly, but put it in a hint. And learn to look at all things with a sort of mental squint.” –  Lewis Carroll

43. “You may not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” – Jodi Picoult

44. “Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.” –  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

45. “The secret to editing your work is simple: You need to become its reader instead of its writer.” –  Zadie Smith

46. “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

47. “Don’t labor over a little cameo work in which every word is to be perfect. Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.” –  Joyce Carol Oates

48. “If you fall in love with the vision and not your words, the rewriting will become easier.” –  Nora DeLoach

49. “Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff clears the way for good, or forms a base on which to build something better.” –  Jennifer Egan

50. “Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.” –  Ray Bradbury

To sum up, write it all down this year. After that, visit BNPress.com to become a published author! Importantly, we have plenty of tools to help new authors. From trusted partners to assist with editing, formatting, or design, to marketing and promotions. Each step of the way, we will be there to help.

And check out more from the B&N Press Blog:

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Creative Writing Quotes

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

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

The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. 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.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Becoming a writer means being creative enough to find the time and the place in your life for writing.

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

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

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

One should be able to return to the first sentence of a novel and find the resonances of the entire work.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

A piece of creative writing, like a day-dream, is a continuation of, and a substitute for, what was once the play of childhood.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none

To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be.

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite.

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That's it in a nutshell ... In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative.

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45 Quotes that Make Great Writing Prompts

Quotes can make great writing prompts. This list is about using quotes for great creative writing.

There are quotes you know, quotes you don’t, and prompts that challenge a writer to think in a different way and embrace changes in style.

How to Use Prompts

These prompts are a bit different. They are a list of quotes meant to inspire. Take these as inspiration for a great story, explain how it applies to you, relate something to it, or even just focus on what the main idea is.

Quotes as Prompts

• The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. -Walt Disney
• If life were predictable, it would cease to be life, and be without flavor. -Eleanor Roosevelt
• If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough. -Oprah Winfrey
• If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success. -James Cameron
• Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. -John Lennon
• When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on. -Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else. -Margaret Mead
• The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. -Eleanor Roosevelt
• Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. -Benjamin Franklin
• It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. -Aristotle
• Whoever is happy will make others happy too. -Anne Frank
• In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. -Abraham Lincoln
• Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game. -Babe Ruth
• Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. -Helen Keller
• Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. -Thomas A. Edison
• You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. -Dr. Seuss
• Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about. -Marilyn Monroe
• Love the life you live. Live the life you love. -Bob Marley
• Life is made of ever so many partings welded together. -Charles Dickens
• Life is trying things to see if they work. -Ray Bradbury
• Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts. -Winston S. Churchill
• Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. -Henry David Thoreau
• The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well. -John D. Rockefeller Jr.
• I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. -Thomas Jefferson
• The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere. -Barack Obama
• You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. -Wayne Gretzky
• Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. -Henry Ford
• I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear. -Rosa Parks
• Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, ‘I’m possible!’ -Audrey Hepburn
• The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. -Ayn Rand
• The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Believe you can and you’re halfway there. -Theodore Roosevelt
• Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. -Vince Lombardi
• You become what you believe. -Oprah Winfrey
• An unexamined life is not worth living. -Socrates
• Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. -George Addair
• Dream big and dare to fail. -Norman Vaughn
• It doesn’t matter how slow you go as long as you do not stop. -Confuscious
• I would rather die of passion than of boredom. -Vincent van Gogh
• Dreaming, after all, is another form of planning. -Gloria Steinem
• Before anything else, preparation is the key to success. -Alexander Graham Bell
• I failed my way to success. -Thomas Edison
• I never dreamed about success, I worked for it. -Estee Lauder
• It’s better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. -Herman Melville

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Let us know your feedback! Thanks for stopping by – see you again soon.

45+ Quotes About Writing from Famous Writers

Whether seasoned and published or just starting out, any writer will appreciate these quotes about writing from celebrated authors who know their craft and its challenges.

No matter how passionate you are about it, writing can be difficult. Whenever you’re struggling with writer’s block, rejection, competition, insecurity, or any of the countless obstacles that wordsmiths encounter daily, it can help to get encouragement from those who have successfully overcome the very same challenges.

So, whether you’re up against a creative wall or just looking for some inspiration to start your next project, these quotes about writing from writers themselves are sure to be welcome reading! 

Inspirational Quotes from Writers  

Trying to get psyched up to sit down and write? It can be reassuring to hear the words of literary greats celebrating a few of the very best parts of being a writer. 

1. “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 Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

2. “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” — Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

3. “Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.” — Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

4. “What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you.” — Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing

5. “Stories aren't made of language: they're made of something else... perhaps they're made of life.” — Philip Pullman, Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling

6. “There is no greater power on this earth than story.” — Libba Bray, The Diviners

7. “You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.” — Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

8. “We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are, and what our relationship is to life and death, what is essential, and what, despite the arbitrariness of falling beams, will not burn.” — Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet

9. “Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.” — Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

10. “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” — Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

11. “First, you write for yourself... always, to make sense of experience and the world around you. It’s one of the ways I stay sane. Our stories, our books, our films are how we cope with the random trauma-inducing chaos of life as it plays.” — Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run

Encouraging Quotes for Writers  

Some of the most famous quotes from writers are about how ridiculously hard writing can be—and why you should rise to the challenge and do it anyway. 

12. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” — Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

13. “And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.” — Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

14. “If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.” — Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

15. “The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.” — Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

16. “The mind has plenty of ways of preventing you from writing, and paralysing self-consciousness is a good one. The only thing to do is ignore it, and remember what Vincent van Gogh said in one of his letters about the painter's fear of the blank canvas—the canvas, he said, is far more afraid of the painter.” — Philip Pullman, Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling

17. “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” — Sol Stein, Stein on Writing: A Master Editor Shares His Craft, Techniques, and Strategies

18. “Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?” — Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing

19. “Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.” — Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

Quotes About the Writing Process

From writers who know the drill, these quotes offer valuable insights and practical advice on the craft of writing, and the discipline and rigor it requires. 

20. “Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.” — William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Audio Collection

21. “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” — William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style

22. “The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.” — Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

23. “People who think that grammar is just a collection of rules and restrictions are wrong. If you get to like it, grammar reveals the hidden meaning of history, hides disorder and abandonment, links things and brings opposites together. Grammar is a wonderful way of organising the world how you'd like it to be.” — Delphine de Vigan, No and Me

24. “Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.” — Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

25. “Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you're being told.” — John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

26. “A great novel, rather than discouraging me, simply makes me want to write.” — Madeleine L’Engle, A

27. “I read and feel that same compulsion; the desire to possess what he has written, which can only be subdued by writing something myself.” — Patti Smith, M Train

28. “Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.” — Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

29. “If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.” — Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

30. “The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.” — William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Audio Collection

31. “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.” — Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

32. “One writes out of one thing only—one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.” — James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

33. “We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.” — Chris Cleave, Little Bee

34. “A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.” — John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Funny Quotes About Writing

Sometimes, when you’re in the thick of a third, fourth, or fifth edit and ready to throw in the towel, what you need most is a good laugh, courtesy of someone who understands your plight. 

35. “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” — Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

36. “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons… All they do is show you've been to college.” — Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

37. “Tellers of stories with ink on paper, not that they matter anymore, have been either swoopers or bashers. Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn't work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right just before they go on to the next one. When they're done, they're done." — Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

38. “I’m sure I could write endlessly about nothing. If only I had nothing to say.” — Patti Smith, M Train

39. “You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits. Gross, right? A bloody pulpy liquid mess. Look at it, try to make sense of it. Realize you can't. Because there is no sense.” — Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

40. “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” — Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Quotes About Writers

Many artists draw much of their inspiration from introspection, and writers are no different. These quotes feature sayings about writers from the ultimate authority: writers themselves.  

41. “If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.” — Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm

42. “Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Love of the Last Tycoon

43. “A storyteller makes up things to help other people; a liar makes up things to help himself.” — Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam

44. “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” — Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

45. “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.” — E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web

46. “A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.” — Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

47. “We never sit anything out. We are cups, quietly and constantly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” — Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

Becoming a writer is especially difficult if you don’t know where to start. To help, we’ve rounded up advice from several authors on starting out as a writer. Take a look at our infographic below to learn what these wordsmiths think you should do to kick off your writing career.

Click to view a full sized writing quotes graphic .

35+ Inspirational Quotes About Hope

Whether you’re up against a challenge or just looking for a little inspiration, these quotes about hope can help you find your faith.

95+ C.S. Lewis Quotes About Love, Life, Faith, Bravery, and Friendship

From The Chronicles of Narnia, The Four Loves, and more, here are 99 of the best C.S. Lewis quotes that capture the magic of childhood and reflect on life’s mysteries.

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Get inspired to speak your mind and step into your power with our collection of quotes from poet and warrior Audre Lorde.

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30 Creative Picture Writing Prompts

By Med Kharbach, PhD | Last Update: May 27, 2024

Picture prompt writing, as Carp et al. (2010) define it, is a technique that uses visual stimuli to inspire and guide students’ writing. Picture prompts are an excellent tool for overcoming writer’s block. They provide a visual stimulus that can ignite creativity and help students generate ideas and organize their thoughts, making the writing process more approachable and less intimidating.

In today’s post, I share practical tips for effectively using picture prompts in writing. I will start with some tips on how to best utilize picture prompts, discuss their numerous benefits, and provide examples to get you started. Additionally, I encourage you to read the references at the bottom of this page for a deeper understanding of this powerful educational tool.

All the picture prompts in this post are available for free download in PNG format. You can easily access and use these resources to enhance your teaching and engage your students in creative writing activities.

What Are The Benefits of Picture Writing Prompts?

The importance of picture writing prompts is well documented in the research literature. These visual tools have been shown to significantly enhance student engagement and creativity in writing tasks. By providing a concrete image to spark imagination, picture prompts help students of all ages and proficiency levels generate ideas more easily, organize their thoughts coherently, and express themselves more vividly.

Picture writing prompts offer a range of benefits supported by various studies:

• Enhanced Engagement and Motivation : Picture prompts capture students’ interest and motivate them to write, as they provide a stimulating visual context (Mukramah et al., 2023; Gonchar & Schulten, 2017).
• Improved Idea Formulation : Visual prompts help students generate and organize ideas more effectively, leading to richer and more detailed writing (Mukramah et al., 2023; Carp et al., 2020).
• Support for Diverse Learners : They are particularly beneficial for English Language Learners and students of different age groups, helping them overcome language barriers and express their thoughts clearly (Gonchar & Schulten, 2017).
• Encouragement of Creative Thinking : Picture prompts inspire creative storytelling and imaginative responses, allowing students to explore different narrative possibilities (Gonchar & Schulten, 2017).
• Facilitation of Critical Thinking : Analyzing and interpreting images encourages students to think critically about what they see and how they translate those thoughts into writing (Mukramah et al., 2023; Carp et al., 2020).
• Ease of Use Across Subjects : These prompts can be used in various subjects, not just language arts, to inspire writing related to science, social studies, and more (Gonchar & Schulten, 2017).

Tips for Using Picture Prompts in Writing

Using picture prompts in writing activities can be incredibly effective in enhancing students’ creativity and writing skills. However, to maximize their benefits, it’s essential to implement them thoughtfully. Below are some tips to help educators effectively use picture prompts in their writing lessons. These suggestions are designed to engage students, stimulate their imagination, and improve their overall writing abilities, making the writing process both educational and enjoyable.

• Select Diverse Images : Use a variety of pictures, including different subjects and settings, to cater to different interests and stimulate diverse ideas.
• Connect to Writing Goals : Choose images that align with specific writing objectives, such as descriptive, narrative, or persuasive writing.
• Encourage Observation : Ask students to closely observe details in the picture, fostering critical thinking and attention to detail.
• Ask Guiding Questions : Provide prompts like “What is happening in this scene?” or “How do you think the characters feel?”
• Incorporate Group Activities : Use picture prompts for group discussions to generate collaborative story ideas.
• Allow Creative Freedom : Encourage students to interpret the images in unique ways, supporting creativity and individual expression.
• Combine with Other Prompts : Mix picture prompts with text or question prompts to provide more structure and support.
• Use for Various Genres : Adapt picture prompts for different genres, such as poetry, essays, and fiction.
• Reflect and Share : Have students share their stories with peers and reflect on how the images influenced their writing.
• Integrate Technology : Utilize digital platforms to display images and enable students to write and share their responses online.

Using Picture Prompt Writing with Students with Special Needs

Picture prompt writing is also beneficial for students with special needs, particularly those with developmental delays such as autism. The research conducted by Carp et al. (2012) found that picture prompts significantly improved the acquisition of auditory-visual conditional discriminations in children with autism, compared to pointing prompts and trial-and-error learning.

The study showed that picture prompts facilitated faster learning and greater accuracy by enhancing the participants’ ability to discriminate relevant features of the comparison stimuli. This suggests that picture prompts are a valuable tool in teaching complex skills to children with developmental delays, supporting their use in educational programs for individuals with autism.

Additionally, Fisher, Kodak, and Moore (2007) demonstrated that picture prompts facilitated the acquisition of auditory-visual conditional discriminations in children with autism. Their study found that picture prompts were more effective than pointing prompts in promoting correct comparison selections.

Carp et al. also cited additional studies that explored various prompting tactics and their effectiveness in teaching complex skills to individuals with developmental disabilities. These findings underscore the importance of incorporating picture prompts into educational strategies to support the learning and development of students with special needs.

Picture Writing Prompts Examples

In this section, I’ve categorized picture writing prompts into three groups to suit different age levels: kids, middle school, and high school. Each category contains tailored prompts designed to engage students at their respective developmental stages.

For Kids (Elementary School)

In this section, we will explore picture writing prompts designed for elementary school students. These prompts are tailored to engage young minds with topics that are both fun and educational. Whether it’s imagining a day in the life of a lion or describing the wonders of a magical garden, these prompts encourage creativity and help children develop their descriptive writing skills.

1. Animals and Nature

Prompt: “Write a story about a day in the life of a lion in the savannah. What adventures does the lion have? Who are its friends?”

Prompt: “Describe what happens in a magical garden that changes with each season. What do you see, hear, and smell during spring, summer, autumn, and winter?”

2. Fantasy and Adventure

Prompt: “Imagine you found a dragon egg. Describe what happens when it hatches and the adventures you go on with your dragon.”

Prompt: “Write about a group of friends who find a treasure map and go on a pirate adventure to find the hidden treasure.”

3. Daily Life

Prompt: “Describe a fun day at the park with your friends. What games do you play? What do you see around you?”

Prompt: “Write a story about your family cooking dinner together. What do you make, and how do you all help?”

4. Holidays and Celebrations

Prompt: “Write about the most exciting Halloween night you can imagine. What costumes do people wear? What surprises do you find?”

Prompt: “Describe a special family tradition during Christmas. What activities do you do together? How does it make you feel?”

5. Community and Helpers

Prompt: “Imagine you spent a day with a firefighter. Describe the different tasks you help with and how you save the day.”

Prompt: “Write a story about a community event like a parade or fair. What different activities and people do you see?”

For Middle School

Middle school is a time of expanding horizons and growing curiosity. This section focuses on picture writing prompts that challenge students to think critically and creatively. From historical events to futuristic cities, these prompts are designed to foster deeper thinking and help students make connections between their writing and the world around them.

1. Historical Events

Prompt: “Imagine you are a reporter covering the moon landing. Describe the events as you see them unfold and how people react.”

Prompt: “Write a diary entry from the perspective of a child living in ancient Egypt. What is your daily life like?”

2. Science and Technology

Prompt: “Describe a futuristic city where robots help with everyday tasks. How do people live and interact with these robots?”

Prompt: “Write about an environmental project you would start to help reduce pollution in your city.”

3. Mystery and Suspense

Prompt: “A foggy forest path leads to an abandoned house. Write a story about what you find inside and the mystery you uncover.”

Prompt: “Describe the events of a night when you and your friends decided to explore a rumored haunted house.”

4. Emotions and Relationships

Prompt: “Write about a time when you felt incredibly happy. What caused this happiness, and how did it change your day?”

Prompt: “Describe a friendship that started unexpectedly and became very important to you.”

5. Exploration and Travel

Prompt: “Imagine you are exploring the Great Wall of China. Describe your journey and the sights you see.”

Prompt: “Write a story about a scuba diving adventure where you discover a hidden underwater city.”

For High School

High school students are ready to tackle more complex and abstract themes in their writing. In this section, we provide picture writing prompts that encourage them to explore social issues, abstract concepts, and literary inspirations. These prompts are intended to provoke thoughtful responses and help students develop their analytical and expressive abilities.

1. Social Issues

Prompt: “Write an essay on the impact of climate change on your community. What changes have you observed, and what solutions do you propose?”

Prompt: “Describe a protest you attended or would like to attend. What is the cause, and what do you hope to achieve?”

2. Abstract and Symbolic

Prompt: “Look at an abstract painting and describe what it represents to you. How does it make you feel, and what do you think the artist was trying to convey?”

Prompt: “Write a story inspired by a symbolic image, such as a broken chain or a lone tree in a vast field.”

3. Literary Inspiration

Prompt: “Imagine you are a character in a classic novel like ‘Pride and Prejudice’ or ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Write a new scene that fits into the story.”

Prompt: “Describe a painting from the Renaissance era and create a story based on the characters and setting.”

4. Career and Future

Prompt: “Write a day in the life of your dream job. What tasks do you perform, and what challenges do you face?”

Prompt: “Describe your first day at college. How do you feel, what do you do, and who do you meet?”

5. Cultural Diversity

Prompt: “Describe a cultural festival you attended. What traditions did you observe, and what did you learn?”

Prompt: “Write a story about a family from a different culture moving to your town. How do they adapt, and what do they teach you?”

Related: 9 Great Books on Essay Writing

Final thoughts

In this post, I talked about picture writing prompts and covered their importance, practical tips for using them, their benefits, and examples to get you started. Picture prompts are excellent tools for overcoming writer’s block and enhancing students’ creativity and writing skills. I hope these insights and strategies will inspire you to incorporate picture prompts into your writing activities. For further reading and a deeper understanding, I encourage you to explore the references provided.

• Carp, C. L., Peterson, S. P., Arkel, A. J., Petursdottir, A. I., & Ingvarsson, E. T. (2012). A further evaluation of picture prompts during auditory-visual conditional discrimination training. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis , 45 (4), 737–751. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.2012.45-737
• Dube, W. V., & McIlvane, W. J. (1999). Reduction of stimulus overselectivity with nonverbal differential observing responses. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 32, 25-33. doi:10.1901/jaba.1999.32-25
• Fisher, W. W., Kodak, T., & Moore, J. W. (2007). Embedding an identity-matching task within a prompting hierarchy to facilitate acquisition of conditional discriminations in children with autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40, 489–499. doi:10.1901/jaba.2007.40-489
• Gonchar, M., & Schulten, K. (2017). A Year of Picture Prompts: Over 160 Images to Inspire Writing. The new York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/learning/lesson-plans/a-year-of-picture-prompts-over-160-images-to-inspire-writing.html
• Mukramah, C., Mustafa, F., & Sari, D. F. (2023). The Effect of Picture and Text Prompts on Idea Formulation and Organization of Descriptive Text. Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, 7(2), 325-341

Further Readings on Picture Prompt Writing

If you’re looking to delve deeper into the benefits and applications of picture prompts in writing, here are some valuable resources:

• “5 Reasons to Use Pictures as Writing Prompts” by The Write Practice
• “How to Use Images to Inspire Creative Writing” by Edutopia
• “ 144 Picture Prompts to Inspire Student Writing” by The Learning Network

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Meet Med Kharbach, PhD

Dr. Med Kharbach is an influential voice in the global educational technology landscape, with an extensive background in educational studies and a decade-long experience as a K-12 teacher. Holding a Ph.D. from Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Canada, he brings a unique perspective to the educational world by integrating his profound academic knowledge with his hands-on teaching experience. Dr. Kharbach's academic pursuits encompass curriculum studies, discourse analysis, language learning/teaching, language and identity, emerging literacies, educational technology, and research methodologies. His work has been presented at numerous national and international conferences and published in various esteemed academic journals.

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8 Most Creative Uses Of Magic In Mushoku Tensei

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Mushoku Tensei: 13 Things About Man-God Anime Fans Might Not Know

Mushoku tensei: 8 powerful quotes by rudeus, mushoku tensei: jobless reincarnation – worst things rudeus has done.

• Unique magical abilities in Mushoku Tensei showcase originality and resourcefulness of characters beyond basic spells.
• Summoning magic in the series is a rare and significant skill, especially when it involves objects or creatures from other universes.
• Silent casting, combination magic, and other creative uses of magic in the series highlight the power of imagination in spellcasting.

As a fantasy-based isekai series, Mushoku Tensei relies heavily on magic for its world-building and plot. However, even in a world run by magic, some uses of magic are reacted to with more surprise and encouragement from observers than others.

The Man God is cloaked in mystery, yet these facts may interest those who follow anime but haven't read the manga.

Apart from the basic attack and defense-oriented spells, few characters in the Mushoku Tensei series have managed to use magic creatively in ways that haven't been seen before. From the diverse but practical application of healing magic to the use of silent casting and compound spells, the most creative uses of magic showcase not only the power of the spells being cast, but also the originality and resourcefulness of the casters.

Warning: The entry on Time Travel contains manga and light novel spoilers

8 Summoning Magic

Summoning objects from another world is a higher level of magic.

The ability to summon a person or an object with magic is often seen in various other fantasy-based anime series. However, in Mushoku Tensei , it’s not the norm. Few characters are versed in the art of summoning, and with Nanahoshi learning how to summon objects and creatures from a whole other universe, summoning magic in Mushoku Tensei takes on a different meaning, especially at its higher levels.

So far, the anime series has only portrayed Nanahoshi as being capable of summoning a plastic bottle from Earth (Rudeus’ old world), but if she ever becomes capable of summoning another human, then that would truly be a conquered milestone.

7 Healing Magic

Its various applications make it indispensable.

This form of magic is the only one that Rudeus is unable to use through silent casting. Throughout the series, the effects of healing magic have been seen. Whether it be through the healing of ailments, the detoxification of poisons, the mending of broken bones, or even the regrowing of cut-off limbs, healing magic is the sort of magic that gives a person a second chance.

Because healing magic is not limited to only the closing of wounds, it serves as a very versatile form of magic, and its various applications make it indispensable, particularly to adventurers who frequently brave dangers and explore the unknown.

6 Time Travel

Traveling to the future is beyond impressive and unheard off.

In terms of magic practices, Rudeus stands head and shoulders above many. While he has not yet discovered how to travel between the past, present, and future in the present timeline, in the future, Rudeus makes a time leap to the past to warn his current self of impending dangers.

When he isn't focused on magic or fighting, Rudeus says some reasonable things.

His application of magic to time travel is unheard of in the Mushoku Tensei world . Unfortunately, it was a one-way trip, as Rudeus died shortly after returning to the past. However, this shows that magic can be used for various other practices that would otherwise be unheard of. After all, few other uses are as creative as time travel.

5 Disturb Magic

Disrupting an opponent’s flow of mana is genius.

The first person to use Disturb Magic in the series was Orsted. This was shown when he met Rudeus, Ruijerd, and Eris on the demon continent. Orsted was able to interrupt Rudeus’ spell-casting process, canceling his spell before it was even launched. Later on, Rudeus studied what Orsted did and termed it "Disturb Magic".

Before a spell is cast, mana forms in the surroundings or in the caster's hand, depending on what type of spell it is, and by disrupting the flow of mana before it can materialize, the caster will be unable to materialize said magic. With this Disrupt Magic, Rudeus proved that, rather than going toe to toe with an opponent, he can simply prevent them from casting in the first place.

Manipulating Gravity On One’s Body Makes For Versatile Movement

Despite the mainstream use of magic in the Mushoku Tensei series , not many people can fly. This is because the mechanics of controlling and applying gravity magic to objects and oneself are unknown and too complex for many. However, Rudeus managed to solve the puzzle, allowing him to fly.

It’s unknown whether the current Rudeus can fly; however, future Rudeus displayed the ability by lifting an inkwell. Flying by controlling gravity is done by lowering the gravity affecting oneself. While flying with gravity magic is a volatile way of using magic, the effects make it worth the risk when successfully done, as proved by future Rudeus.

3 Teleportation

This form of magic makes transportation much easier.

The Teleport Incident is without a doubt one of the greatest calamities portrayed in the Mushoku Tensei series so far. While the after-effects of the incident killed many and deranged many families, it’s a creative way of using magic. This form of magic makes it possible to teleport across long distances. If the after-effects seen during the Teleport Incident can be nullified, introducing this form of magic to even a few cities would drastically shorten transportation time and costs.

Throughout his adventures, Rudeus has done some pretty terrible things, here they are.

Journeys that could take years would become instantaneous, making teleportation the kind of magic that could upend the world. While the individual behind the Teleport Incident is unknown, without the after-effects, such a person would’ve been recognized as a hero, showing how much of an impact it could have.

2 Silent Casting

Ignoring vocal incantations makes casting spells so much easier.

Apart from its potential usage in battle, silent casting remains one of the most creative uses of magic in the series. It allows mages to completely do without chants, making it easier, faster, and more effective to cast spells. Moreover, in terms of household chores, silent casting would prove to be highly efficient, as controlling a stream of water or heating a bath would not need to include an all-powerful chant.

Additionally, in terms of its battle usage, it makes it harder for one’s adversaries to predict what spell they will use and develop a counter for it. The only caveat to silent casting is that one needs to visualize the outcome of the spell properly, so it’s heavily dependent on the imagination.

1 Combination Magic

Combining various forms of magic gives mages an edge.

This form of magic serves as a creative way of casting spells, as it allows even simple elementary spells to be used for a wide range of purposes. Blending elements like water and fire to create powerful steam explosions or ice shards would undoubtedly do more damage than simply firing off a stream of water.

Moreover, when faced with combination magic , few mages will know how to appropriately defend themselves. One of Rudeus’ signature spells has him mold earth into sharp lance-like objects and propel them at incredible speeds using wind. This is just one examples of the truly creative way this magic makes his spells more formidable and destructive.

Mushoku Tensei Jobless Reincarnation

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4 Reasons to Start Using Claude 3 Instead of ChatGPT

Quick links, claude is better at creative writing, claude offers multimodality for free, larger context window, more messages per hour.

• Claude excels at creative writing, producing engaging and natural-sounding content with less clichés.
• Claude offers free multimodal features, while ChatGPT requires upgrading for similar capabilities.
• Claude boasts a larger context window and potentially more messages per hour than ChatGPT.

In the AI chatbot space, ChatGPT has been the undisputed leader since its launch in November 2022. However, with the release of Claude 3, it is increasingly looking like ChatGPT might be losing that title. Here are four reasons you should consider switching from ChatGPT to Claude.

Besides occasional science homework, programming tasks, and fun games, one of the most popular use cases of AI chatbots is creative writing. Most users use AI chatbots to help draft an email , cover letter, resume, article, or song lyrics—basically one creative write-up or another. While ChatGPT has clearly been the favored option owing mostly to its brand name and publicity, Claude has consistently delivered top-notch results even in earlier iterations of the AI chatbots. But it's not just about providing top-notch results. Claude, especially backed by the latest Claude 3 model , outperforms ChatGPT in a wide range of creative writing tasks.

As someone who has consistently used both chatbots since their launch, Claude, although not necessarily the overall better model, is significantly better at creating write-ups that better mimic human "creativity and imperfections." Putting both chatbots to the test, ChatGPT's write-ups, although grammatically correct, were full of tell-tale signs of an AI-written piece. Claude's write-ups read more naturally and sound human. Although not perfect, they are likely to be more engaging and creative.

Too frequently, ChatGPT falls victim to the use of so many clichés and predictable word choices. Ask ChatGPT to write about some business topics, and there's a good chance you will see words like "In today's business environment," "In recent history," and "In the fast-paced digital landscape" in the starting paragraphs.

Putting our theory to the test, it was just as predicted. ChatGPT (GPT-3.5 and GPT-4) used cliché intros in five out of five trials. Here are the first three samples:

Claude, on the other hand, produced varying results four times out of five trials, avoiding the cliche on the first trial:

Besides cliché, ChatGPT, more than Claude, tends to fall victim to the sporadic use of joining words like "in conclusion," "as a result," and a tendency for unnecessary emphasis where emphatic words like "undisputed, critical, unquestionable, must" etc., are used.

But besides these flaws, how do write-ups from each chatbot sound from a holistic point of view?

To top off the comparison, I asked both chatbots to produce rhyming rap lyrics on the theme "coconut to wealth." Claude seems the better option, but I'll let you be the judge.

Here's ChatGPT's take:

And here's Claude's take:

Early adopters of ChatGPT probably have a deep-rooted preference for the AI chatbot, but when it comes to creative writing, ChatGPT has some serious catching up to do in many areas.

Besides Google's Gemini AI chatbot, there are hardly any major AI chatbots in the market that offer Claude's multimodal features for free. With the free version of ChatGPT, all you get is text generation abilities, and that's it. No file uploads for analysis, no image processing, nothing else! On the other hand, Claude offers these premium features on its free tier. So, you can use image prompting or upload files for analysis on the chatbot for free if you use the free beta version of the bot.

Context window is the limit of text data an AI chatbot can process at a go. Think of it as how many things you can keep in your memory (and be able to recall) at a time.

Depending on the version of ChatGPT you use, you should get anywhere between 4k, 8k, 16k, 32k, and 128k context windows. For clarity, a 4k context window can accommodate around 3,000 words, while a 32k window can accommodate around 24,000 words. With the ChatGPT free tier, you get the lowest limits of the context window options (4k or 8k), meaning a few pages of text. You can access the 16k and possibly 32k options on ChatGPT Plus or Team plans, while the 128k context window seems to be an exclusive reserve of the ChatGPT Enterprise plans.

Whereas Claude has a 200k context window on its free and premium plans—a significant improvement from ChatGPT's 4k or 8k window.

Why does this even matter? Well, the larger the context window, the more text data you can process at a time without the AI chatbot making things up. Claude's 200k context window is equivalent to around 150,000 words. Yep, it means you'll theoretically be able to process 150,000 words simultaneously with Claude, while ChatGPT could cap you out at 24,000 words even on its premium tier. You see? The difference is like night and day—at least in theory.

Rate limits can be a pain. You're in the middle of an interesting prompting session, you get an alert that you've reached your limit and have to wait (sometimes hours!) to get a reset. It's a huge joy killer and can set your work back hours. However, this happens both on ChatGPT and Claude, so it's an even ground on that point.

ChatGPT offers 40 messages every three hours on the Plus plan, while Claude offers 100 messages per eight hours. If you're not lost in the optics and do the math, ChatGPT's message limits are slightly better than Claude's. But there's more to it.

OpenAI dynamically throttles your usage limits. This means the limit you see isn't what you'll always get. It depends on the demand, as per OpenAI . On the other hand, despite having slightly lower usage limits, Claude can actually be more liberal with the limits depending on how much text you use per message.

So, if, for instance, you send around 2,000 words (around 200 English sentences of 15–25 words each), you should be able to get "at least" the 100 messages per 8-hour limit. Two thousand words per prompt is a generous number; only a few people get that wordy when doing basic prompting. If you use a lower number of words per prompt, you should be able to get a larger number of messages per hour theoretically.

So, while ChatGPT might seem more generous on the outside if you use both chatbots daily, Claude seems to be the more generous option, although not necessarily at all times.

While early adopters may have a sentimental attachment to ChatGPT, it's becoming increasingly clear that Claude is a force to be reckoned with. As the AI landscape continues to evolve, it will be fascinating to see how these titans of conversational AI push each other to new heights, ultimately benefiting users with ever-improving and more capable chatbots. The future of AI-powered interactions has never been more exciting.