Inspiring Words: A Collection of Quotes from Renowned Authors

"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. What I want and what I fear."

- Joan Didion

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream by night."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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

"That’s what you’re looking for as a writer when you’re working. You’re looking for your own freedom."

- Philip Roth

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Creativity is a combination of discipline and childlike spirit."

- Robert Greene

"Writing is the painting of the voice."

- Voltaire

"It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting."

- Paulo Coelho

"I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere and it can do anything."

- Alice Walker

"Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself… it’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless."

- Harper Lee

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them."

- Henry David Thoreau

"There are significant moments in everyone’s day that can make literature. That’s what you ought to write about."

- Raymond Carver

"Keep asking questions because people will always want to know the answer. Open with a question and don’t answer it until the end."

- Lee Child

"But when people say, did you always want to be a writer? I have to say no! I always was a write."

- Ursula K. Le Guin

"You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."

- Maya Angelou

"If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word."

- Margaret Atwood

"You should write stories because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page."

- Annie Proulx

"I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be stilled."

- Sylvia Plath

"If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart."

- Terry Brooks

"If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it."

- H.G. Wells

"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

"Write a page a day. Only 300 words and in a year you have written a novel."

- Stephen King

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."

- Mark Twain

"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

"The first draft is a skeleton. Just bare bones. The rest of the story comes later with revising."

- Judy Blume

"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