Quotes

A collection of quotes about writing and the writing life. 

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

"The freelance writer is the person who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps."
— Robert Benchley

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

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."
— Maya Angelou

"I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning."
— Peter de Vries

"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat."
— Edgar Allan Poe

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
— Jack London

“This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it...You practice whether you want to or not. You just do it.” 
— Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

"You learn to write by writing."
 —William Zinsser, On Writing Well

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."
— Oscar Wilde

"Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper. Everything can have drama if it's done right. Even a pancake."

— Julia Child

"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."

— Mark Twain

"The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."
— Mark Twain

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." 

—  Benjamin Franklin

"Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." 
— Isaac Asimov

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

"Nothing succeeds like success. "
 — Alexandre Dumas

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." — Ernest Hemingway

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
— Ray Bradbury

“Sometimes superheroes are regular people, and there are millions of them, typing away at their keyboards.” 
― Michael Poore, Reincarnation Blues

"I don't believe in 'thinking' old. Although I've transitioned through many bodies - a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult - my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life."
 —  Wayne Dyer

"I have a mess in my head sometimes, and there's something very satisfying about putting it into words. Certainly it's not something that you're in charge of, necessarily, but writing about it, putting it into your words, can be a very powerful experience."
— Carrie Fisher

Quotes from Nevada County Authors

"Writing is permission to think." — Molly Fisk

"To write is an exercise in creativity. You write because you are called to it." — Jordan Fisher Smith

More Writing Quotes

Goodreads Quotes 

Brainy Quotes

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