100+ Motivational Quotes

Inspiration from Famous Writers

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

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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.” William Faulkner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.” Ernest Hemingway

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

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

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” E.L. Doctorow

“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” Agatha Christie

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

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

“Start before you’re ready.” Steven Pressfield

“A writer is working when he’s staring out of the window.” Burton Rascoe

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

“Write what should not be forgotten.” Isabel Allende

“The best way to become a writer is to be a reader first.” Alice Hoffman

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

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

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” Mark Twain

“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

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

“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 E. Butler

“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write.” Samuel Johnson

“Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.” Anne McCaffrey

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

“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.” Barbara Kingsolver

“Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure.” H.P. Lovecraft

“The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.” Toni Morrison

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

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

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

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” Gustave Flaubert

“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

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

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” Stephen King

“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything.” Enid Bagnold

“Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse.” William S. Burroughs

“All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies.” Steve Almond

“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.” Jack Kerouac

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

“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.” George Orwell

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

“Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it’s work.” Stephen King

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

“To defend what you’ve written is a sign that you are alive.” William Zinsser

“If I had not existed, someone else would have written me.” William Faulkner

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

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

“The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.” John Steinbeck

“A writer is like a bean plant — he has his little day, and then gets stringy.” E.B. White

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

“A writer is working when he’s staring out of the window.” Burton Rascoe

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

“Write what should not be forgotten.” Isabel Allende

“The best way to become a writer is to be a reader first.” Alice Hoffman

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

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

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” Mark Twain

“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

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” Confucius

“Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.” Julie Andrews

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” Maya Angelou

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill

“Through perseverance, many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.” Benjamin Disraeli

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.” Vince Lombardi

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” Walter Elliot

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” Mary Anne Radmacher

“If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” Martin Luther King Jr.

“Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.” John Quincy Adams

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” Confucius

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill

“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” Robert Jordan

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” Margaret Thatcher

“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.” Steve Maraboli

“Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems.” Gever Tulley

“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo — far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.” Jodi Picoult

“Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” Nelson Mandela

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” Mary Anne Radmacher

“My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.” Mizuta Masahide

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

“Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.” Khaled Hosseini

“I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be stilled.” Sylvia Plath

“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

“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” Isaac Asimov

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

“Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.” Victor Hugo

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” Henry Ford

“If you are going through Hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill

“Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems.” Gever Tulley

“Resilience is all about being able to overcome the unexpected. Sustainability is about survival. The goal of resilience is to thrive.” Jamais Cascio

“Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” Og Mandino

“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.” Steve Maraboli