Creativity Quotes

"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

"The secret of it all is to write… without waiting for a fit time or place."

- Walt Whitman

"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

"Successful writing is one part inspiration and two parts sheer stubbornness."

- Gillian Flynn

"I write books because I have always been fascinated by stories and language, and because I love thinking about what makes people tick."

- Lois Lowry

"As a writer, you should not judge. You should understand."

- Ernest Hemingway

"If you don’t see the book you want on the shelf, write it."

- Beverly Cleary

"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

"Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Make some light."

- Kate DiCamillo

"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

"The first draft is you just telling yourself the story."

- Terry Pratchett

"The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up."

- Donna Tart

"Writing is an act of faith, not a grammar trick."

- E.B. White

"Good stories are not written. They are rewritten."

- Phyllis Whitney

"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

"You may not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page."

- Jodi Picoult

"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

"The secret to editing your work is simple: You need to become its reader instead of its writer."

- Zadie Smith

"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

"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

"If you fall in love with the vision and not your words, the rewriting will become easier."

- Nora DeLoach

"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

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

- Ray Bradbury

"My advice is not to wait to be struck by an idea. If you’re a writer, you sit down and damn well decide to have an idea. That’s the way to get an idea."

- Andy Rooney

"Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye."

- Dorothy Parker

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

- Jack London

"Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one."

- Terry Pratchett

"You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it."

- Robin Williams

"Every pass, a story."

"The dragonfly is nature's artist, painting strokes of beauty with every flutter"