Writing Life Quotes

Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Writing Life.

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

Logan Pearsall Smith

Humor Funny Inspirational Vanity Writing Life

Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, i

Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.

Love Struggle Writing Life

The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gen

The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain.

It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little

It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness,

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing Writing Life

Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-dis

Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less fiction these days, finding the buzz and the joy I used to get from fiction in ever stranger works of non-fiction, or poetry.

If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days a

If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.

And here you see me working out, as cheerfully and thankfull

And here you see me working out, as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of sharing in the glass a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.

Charles Dickens

Writing Life Charles Dickens Victorian

All writers have this vague hope that the elves will come in

All writers have this vague hope that the elves will come in the night and finish any stories.

Writing Writing Life Elves

I knew how severe I had been and how bad things had been. Th

I knew how severe I had been and how bad things had been. The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one who poverty bothers.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing Life Paris

I'm writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale i

I'm writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a writer.

Writing Advice Writing Process Writing Writing Craft Writing Life

Writing is the great invention of the world.

Writing is the great invention of the world.

Abraham Lincoln

Inspirational Writing Writing Life Us Presidents

Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to re

Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

Orson Scott Card

Admiration Writing Wonder Wonders Writing Craft Writing Life Motivation

In order to write about life first you must live it.

In order to write about life first you must live it.

Ernest Hemingway

I have spent a good many years since--too many, I think--bei

I have spent a good many years since--too many, I think--being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

Writing Writing Life Critics

For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab t

For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room...