Quotes For Writers Quotes & Sayings

The defining lines of reality have always been a bit blurred for me. — Christy Hall

And for the next long years of my life, I tried to remember only the reading, not the terrible things that happened to me as I came and went up and down the stairs. The library became my sanctuary. I loved the ways the precious stories took shape but always had room to be read again. I became fascinated with how writers did that. How did they make a story feel so complete and yet to open-ended? It was like painting a picture that changed each time you looked at it. — Rene Denfeld

Each day challenge yourself, go that extra mile — Janet Homes

People who don't read fiction are scared of what's inside their own heads. — Carla H. Krueger

At the inauguration of each sentence, the writer commences with an optimistic sense of curiosity. Similar to an inquisitive explorer, a writer begins each thoughtful decree with an appreciative sense of the unknown and ends with a reverent regard for the unanswerable. Repeating this instigating act of discovery by placing a combination of sentences down on paper creates a unique verdict. The writer's compilation of pronouncements expresses their interpretation of life. Replicating this creative endeavor in the futile effort to say it all imitates the revolving mystery of life where physical reality and mysterious forces of nature operate upon humankind. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I believe the best reviews are any of those wherein readers share their true opinion, no matter how many stars they rate my work. When I receive responses from appreciative people thanking for useful and amusing reading, it feels like my wings stretch up and blood carries the highest happiness circulating in my veins. I think many writers will understand what I mean by that. — Sahara Sanders

For the writer, madness should seep slowly out of them from the world they endure each day. — Jason E. Hodges

No-one knows your mind better than you do. — Rusty Blackwood

Writer's block is just another name for fear. — Jacob Nordby

We finally realize this one day that our solitude is a blessing for us! — Avijeet Das

There are books that change our perspectives and books that change our personalities. — Carla H. Krueger

Caught red-handed for exclamation abuse. — Buffy Andrews

It is obvious that most people are not living the life they want to live! The easiest solution for this problem is to give up the life you want to live. And the hardest solution is this: Give up everything which prevents you to live the life you want to live! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

She quotes Robert Louis Stevenson about how young writers must read like predators. And she says that all of us, not just writers, must read like predators. For books are food, she said, for every single one of us. — Pete Hamill

It's our decisions, not our conditions, that ultimately shape the quality of our lives. — Derric Yuh Ndim

The innumerable worlds in the Milky Way, words. — Jack Kerouac

Bravery isn't brandishing a sword. It's standing your moral ground and letting others try their best to take you down. — Carla H. Krueger

If people don't feel any emptiness when you leave a place, then it means you were an emptiness for them! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Stop waiting for creative inspiration. Start creating and inspire yourself along the way. — Ryan Lilly

When I reach for my pen, nothing is out of reach. — Rob Bignell, Editor

A story should be like a river, flowing and never stopping, your readers passengers on a boat, whirling downstream through constantly refreshing and changing scemery. — Ray Bradbury

When the author is not traveling, he works at an L-shaped desk, which affords a view north through a large sunny window. He writes everything on an electric typewriter because "it has to be a book from the first day," he explains. He has no daily routine because of all the traveling he does, but follows a very disciplined writing process. He writes each page six times, then places it in a three-ring binder with a DePauw University cover ("a talisman," he calls this memento from his alma mater). When he feels that he has gotten a page just right, he takes out another 20 words. "After a year, I've come to the end. Then I'll take this first chapter, and without rereading it, I'll throw it away and write the chapter that goes at the beginning. Because the first chapter is the last chapter in disguise." He always hands in a completed manuscript, and his editor is his first reader. — Jennifer M. Brown

our value/belief system acts as a
conditioning factor for our thinking pattern. — Derric Yuh Ndim

The word 'NO' is the best motivation there is for the storyteller in you. — A.K. Kuykendall

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. — Herman Melville

Write for the love of storytelling, not the acclaim. — Airam

Who knows, maybe one day there will no longer be Literature. Instead there will be literary web sites. Like those stars, still shining but long dead, the web sites will testify to the existence of past writers. There will be quotes, fragments of texts, which prove that there used to be complete texts once. Instead of readers there will be cyber space travelers who will stumble upon the websites by chance and stop for a moment to gaze at them. How they will read them? Like hieroglyphs? As we read the instructions for a dishwasher today? Or like remnants of a strange communication that meant something in the past, and was called Literature? — Dubravka Ugresic

The stone you took away from a beach will long for that beach because it belongs there! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

A writer's tools are desperation, humiliation, loneliness, love, affection, heartache, happiness, glee, defeat, victory, setbacks, and a desire for personal redemption. People with the experience to know of such things relate that in order to write one must suffer an alleyway of anguish, and experience an array of physical and emotional pain. More than anything else, emotional growth, and writing are each reflective of the immeasurable gain accomplished through studious reflection. — Kilroy J. Oldster

You can either follow your dreams or adjust with your society's expectations ... Either way, consequences are uncertain ... the path to glory or the boulevard of mediocrity, both lead to the grave ... Choose what's worthwhile, for the end is the same. — K. Hari Kumar

Energy will go into what you love, and what you love will grow. Go for a walk and watch it bloom. — A.D. Posey

The words that come out of your imagination are your own - just be sure they are. — Rusty Blackwood

If you write a kid's book only for kids, then you have failed. — Don Roff

I think today is a day for the heart. What do you think? — A.D. Posey

Folding the laundry, completing another project at work, or watching television for the next hour doesn't build your writing muscles. It only leaves them flabby. — Rob Bignell, Editor

We have conversations most nights, Sylvia Plath and me. On these cold wintry nights with our coffee mugs in hand, we talk for hours and hours, Sylvia Plath and me! — Avijeet Das

For the philosopher, language, thought, and passion are the same. Ideas are personal to a philosopher; they express their human passion and articulate their novel ideas in language. Ideas are more than mere concepts, trifles that the philosophical mind toys with. Ideas provide both the structure and inner vitality that holds great thinkers' conceptual structure together. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Most people don't have real friends. You have people in your life waiting for opportunities to see what YOU can do for them. — Brandi L. Bates

To be remembered, umbrella waits for the rain! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Quotes from the Underground is a remarkable resource and must-read for writers, researchers, activists and indeed anyone who embraces progressive values and hopes to rescue politics from corporate control. — Joel Bakan

I surround myself with books when I write, thus surrounding myself with writers... only they don't critique me and then get up for coffee. — Ryan Lilly

Writers Are Insane. For months we are lone wolves locked in our caves. Then overnight we become publicity hounds. It's a schizophrenic business. — Robert Mykle

poetry. i am not writing it.
(make way for me please)
it is my skin. dripping with light. — Sanober Khan

A book is like a trip to a world of imagination and creativity, and those who don't read will for ever stay in the same place. — Dulce Rodrigues

The mind of an artist never sleeps, because dreaming is when they do their best work. — Mark W. Boyer

Although some popular religious texts such as the New Testament, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, or Tibetan Book of the Dead contain interesting insights and stories, it is the Jewish religious texts such as the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) that contain valuable information on acquiring wealth. — H.W. Charles

Special Super Bowl Wisdom of the Ages: "Marshawn Lynch" Not really shy. Still extremely embarrassed he believed you can't be charged for beating up on large groups of people-as long as you are carrying a football. — Matthew D. Heines

There is no time for holding back. — A.D. Posey

Reading, writing, and personal introspection will not protect us from hardship and suffering, but they might introduce us to critical thinking and expose us to what is good in humankind and beautiful in the world that we share with all of nature. Contemplative thought, especially that supplemented with reading literature and attempting to write our own replies to the echoing voices of writers whom preceded us provide us with the potentiality for change, the possibility of personal illumination that enables us to experience a heighted quality of life. — Kilroy J. Oldster

My novels are written in first person so you can feel the emotion of the character. — Airam

Three words for a writer: Make me care. — Buffy Andrews

Desires are stronger than dreams. Dreams fade and frizzle out with the night time but desires get stronger until they are granted. — Jaachynma N.E. Agu

As a writer, I like the list of "things to strive for" that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter:
genuine clarity
genuine feeling
the right word
the exact English sentence
the eloquent detail
the rigorous dramatization of story — Richard Yates

Never be afraid to write what you believe. If the message speaks the truth, others will fear your words for you. — Rob Bignell, Editor

The personal screenplay- where you dive into the terrifying depths of your soul, unearth the most intimate details about yourself, and put it on paper for the world to see. Proceed with caution, for madness lies ahead. — A.D. Posey

Poets, with no sponsors, no agenda, are the truest form of freedom today, bleeding out every drop of themselves for the world to either hate or devour. — Jason E. Hodges

Letting go looks different for everyone, I think. Sometimes it's as simple as waking up one day and deciding not to let your past rule you. Other times it's a process; slow moving and painful, like trudging through a forest of thorny vines in hopes that you'll find freedom on the other side. — Allison J. Kennedy

The proverb, "Where there's a will.." sums it up for a writer who had just started in his writing life; for himself, the fictional characters and the audience of his works. It's a trinity of perspectives; one of his struggle, another of the story character which he writes about and the last one of the reader's expectation of his protagonists. — Lucas Michael

Writing is the dragon that lives underneath my floorboards. The one I incessantly feed for fear it may turn and devour my ass. Writing is the friend who doesn't return my phone calls; the itch I'm unable to scratch; a dinner invitation from a cannibal; elevator music for a narcoleptic. Writing is the hope of lifting all boats by pissing in the ocean. Writing isn't something that makes me happy like a good cup of coffee. It's just something I do because not writing, as I've found, is so much worse. — Quentin R. Bufogle

For as long as I write,
I will never be lost. — Nikki Rowe

We can create transcending stories for readers and for us. Creativity is a double edge sword, which can kill the writer. — Rossana Condoleo

As I drove out the wrought iron gates I had entered, I noticed for the first time how intricate and beautiful they were. They were forged by hand so many years ago and had stood the test of time. — Buffy Andrews

My stories are my children. Some are sweet infants that I coddle and care for. Others are old enough now, they need to damn well get a job! — Christy Hall

Writers are sponges. They absorb life, then squeeze and ring it out onto a page. Sometimes, if they squeeze too hard, they dry up. Not hard enough and they remain saturated, heavy and unpredictable, as they carry around a volume of ideas too great for their capacity. — Sarah Colliver

Believe in people, they fly for a day. Teach them to believe in themselves, they soar for a lifetime. — A.D. Posey

You will need seed money, so begin saving for your book. Don't give up. Also, write down the ideas that you have right away so you don't lose them. — Soraya Diase Coffelt

Every day you make certain decisions and take specific actions that come about as a result of how you think, feel and the habits you tend to indulge — Derric Yuh Ndim

i am infinitely yearning
brimming
and overflowing
in words

i discover
it's another way
for me
to be in tears. — Sanober Khan

when you are a child you unconsciously adopt certain beliefs. Yet, there comes
the necessity to upgrade these beliefs as you grow older. — Derric Yuh Ndim

Thought for the day: Twitter ... 140 character limit ... must be a great tool for fortune cookie writers ... — E.A. Bucchianeri

Not everyone will like what you write but there's a certain group who'll love what you write. Keep WRITING for them. — David Chuka

I never write the storyline ahead of the novel and stick to it like glue. I prefer my writing to be organic. It takes on a life of it's own. — Airam

Hone your writing skills as if they were your finest weapons of war. For in the literary arena, your pen will truly be your sword. — Max Hawthorne

Identifying as a writer is a matter of self-acceptance. It's not a thing that can be given to you, or bestowed upon you. You are a writer if you write. That's it. If what you are seeking is to be acknowledged as a writer by other people, many of them strangers, you're in for a demoralizing journey. It is a silly club where those who have been 'accepted' are loathe to permit others into. It's sort of like how we Americans love denying our own immigrant origins while railing against immigration. — Vincent Louis Carrella

... The Book is more important than your plans for it. You have to go with what works for The Book ~ if your ideas appear hollow or forced when they are put on paper, chop them, erase them, pulverise them and start again. Don't whine when things are not going your way, because they are going the right way for The Book, which is more important. The show must go on, and so must The Book. — E.A. Bucchianeri

Writing is like breathing for my soul. — A.D. Posey

Enthusiastic admiration is the first principle of knowledge and the last — William Blake

My fingers burn behind the keys of my typewriter, the lettering fading with every thoughtful strike. The many words I write I dare not stall; my mind perpetually alert for my magnum opus call. — A.K. Kuykendall

I'll pray for good semen. And I'll get all of my friends to pray for good semen. — Buffy Andrews

Writers can write whatever they want, but after THE END, when they self publish their book, they become accountable to readers for the quality of the book they're selling. — Eeva Lancaster

Material poverty doesn't cause
murder, rape or terror.Mental poverty does. — Derric Yuh Ndim

Yes the sex scenes are explicit but we all love the dirty bits! — Airam

Shy people are my favorites. The unmistakable glint of shyness in someone's eyes can mesmerize me for years! — Avijeet Das

Our constant desire to genre-label cripples new writers. Let them experiment, explore and surprise. — Carla H. Krueger

They think the recipe for a 'home-maker' is- a woman who isn't smart enough, lacks skills and above all isn't ambitious enough! Well she is every bit as smart as the woman who puts on a suit to go to work in a man's world to prove- times have changed! She is every bit as intelligent! — Mrinalini Mitra

Writing when perched along a ledge of conscious awareness while simultaneously giving voice to the unconscious voice tumbling within allows a writer to tap into the external world of the known while also exploring the unconscious world of the unknown and the unknowable. For as long as I can stand the mounting pressure, I dance along this tremulous thin line separating sanity and insanity, mediating the conflicts between a lucid intellect and an impulsive, instinctual nature. Captivated in this submerged psyche space, disengaged from conscious tether of personal identity, and free from the jaundiced constraints and dictatorial commands of rational logic, I operate unencumbered by preconceived limitations. — Kilroy J. Oldster

She looked at the empty page, which remained blank, apart from the small wet dots from her tears, for hours. Her mind was a turmoil of sadness, rage, fear and all those emotions that gave her inspiration. However her heart lacked the will as the empty words enclosed her soul pulling it down towards the frenzied ravenous imps that stalked hells pantry.... — Virginia Alison

Ugh, writer's block. The best thing to do is to forget about everything you're trying to do. Get away from your writing station, kick your feet up and relax. Then allow your mind to just wander. Don't stop it. Just let yourself think of anything, no mater how silly the thoughts seem. Remember, not to judge these thoughts. This will open up your creative receptors. You'll begin to think outside the box. Then the good stuff will start racing through you. That's when you start writing! — La Tisha Honor

When entering a library, I never forget to bow down! — Avijeet Das

The worst reviews, by my mind, are those from individuals who enjoy entertaining themselves by writing something bad about books they actually never read, which is as clear as day from what they're saying. It's even more puzzling for an author to check some of these "honest" reviewers' pages and see that they created their profile with one goal in mind; to post you a bad review, as there's nothing else they wanted to rate. — Sahara Sanders

Writers perform the so-called counterfactual thinking all the time. All the time. For most people, counterfactual thingking is a habit, but for writers, it is a necessity — Ika Natassa

Fight the darkness. Fight for the light. — A.D. Posey

Every writer or wanna-be writer has ideas for books. The problem isn't finding an idea, it's choosing one — Jo Linsdell

Abusive relationships exist because they provide enough rations of warmth, laughter, and affection to clutch onto like a security blanket in the heap of degradation. The good times are the initial euphoria that keeps addicts draining their wallets for toxic substances to inject into their veins. Scraps of love are food for an abusive relationship. — Maggie Young

There are some great, subversive female writers out there. Gender should not affect anything. It does, but it shouldn't. — Carla H. Krueger

Like a Rubik's Cube, I have many configurations; Do not just assume that you have "figured" me out, just because you've seen one side. — Andrea L'Artiste

Days may pass into months, months may pass into years, and years may pass into decades, but I will always keep waiting for you. — Avijeet Das

A writer of any merit does not worry about being accepted everywhere. He must write to inspire, to change for the better or to challenge the status quo! — Avijeet Das

Always write exactly what you're feeling at the exact moment when writing something like poetry or an emotional novel. Put yourself, pour all emotions into your work ... make yourself cry, feel joy if you are writing joyful things, feel lovey if it calls for it ... just put your heart and soul into all that you do ... then you will be a good writer when you can make whoever reads your work, feel. -Nina Jean Slack — Nina Jean Slack

Lately, I usually write at the desk in my living-room or bedroom. From time to time, our red and stripy cat named Foxy decides to be my companion, poking his curious caramel-colored nose to the screen, watching me typing, and making attempts to put his paws on the keyboard despite the fact that he knows he is not allowed to; he also loves to arrange "sunbathing sessions for himself, purring joyfully while lying with his belly up under the lamp placed to the left of my computer; and, of course, the cat can't wait for when I happen to have a snack, to beg for some treats that seem to him tastiest if eaten from a caring human's hand. — Sahara Sanders