Inspiring Words: A Curated Collection of Quotes to Ignite Writers' Creativity

"If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it."

- Toni Morrison

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

- Stephen King

"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to."

- Alan Wilson Watts

"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. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window."

- William Faulkner

"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called ‘leaves’) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time–proof that humans can work magic."

- Carl Sagan

"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

"First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice."

- Octavia Butler

"You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write."

- Annie Proulx

"A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, or because everything she does is golden. 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

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

- Jack London

"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

- Stephen King

"If a story is in you, it has to come out."

- William Faulkner

"Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way."

- Ray Bradbury

"The scariest moment is always just before you start."

- Stephen King

"I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work."

- Pearl S. Buck

"Writing is a calling, not a choice."

- Isabel Allende

"The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart."

- Maya Angelou

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."

- Anaïs Nin

"Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on."

- Louis L'Amour

"A word after a word after a word is power."

- Margaret Atwood

"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself."

- Albert Camus

"If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things."

- Anne Lamott

"A writer or any artist can’t expect to be embraced by the people. I’ve done records where it seemed like no one listened to them. You write poetry books that maybe 50 people read. And you just keep doing your work because you have to, because it’s your calling. But it’s beautiful to be embraced by the people. Some people have said to me, ‘Well, don’t you think that kind of success spoils one as an artist? If you’re a punk rocker, you don’t want to have a hit record …’ And I say to them, ‘$@#* you!’ One does their work for the people. And the more people you can touch, the more wonderful it is. You don’t do your work and say, ‘I only want the cool people to read it.’ You want everyone to be transported, or hopefully inspired by it. When I was really young, William Burroughs told me, ‘Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises. Don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work. And make the right choices and protect your work. And if you can build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.’"

- Patti Smith

"Writers don’t choose their craft; they need to write in order to face the world."

- Alice Hoffman

"Just know that everyone’s writing is terrible. Until it’s not. No one’s stuff is right immediately. You gotta work it. Refine it. Shape it. Spend time with it. It’s a relationship. Between you and what comes from you. Not easy. Gonna be terrible before it’s not. And that’s okay."

- Ava DuVernay

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."

- Sylvia Plath

"There’s nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it."

- Charles Bukowski

"The difference between the ‘almost right’ word and the ‘right’ word is really a large matter … ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

- Mark Twain

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

- Beverly Cleary

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

- Sylvia Plath

"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

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

- Gillian Flynn

"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

"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

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

- Phyllis Whitney

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

- Jodi Picoult

"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

"Do not listen to the voices that tell you that you aren’t good enough—whether they come from the outside (a teacher, a parent, a friend) or the inside (your own self doubts). If you feel the urge to write, if you have stories to tell, then the seed is already there and it just needs to be nurtured by the right mentors, guides, and editors. Follow that dream and don’t ever look back."

- Kristy McGinnis

"I’ve wanted to be an author for so much of my life. I’m living proof that dreams do come true, through persistence, effort, help from friends, and luck. Please don’t give up on your dreams. Walt Disney was right when he said if you can dream it, you can do it."

- Wendy Kendall

"Throughout all of my health challenges, writing has really given me focus and helped me remember that I have so much to still do in my life. More words to write, more lives to affect. I want to continue to be here, living my dreams. Which means I need to continue to fight. Writing has been my anchor."

- Tracey Shearer

"I truly believe you can do anything you want to do if you’re prepared to work for it. It will happen easier for others, but so long as you persevere and don’t get bogged down by comparisons, you will absolutely will succeed."

- A. S, Thornton

"I keep writing because it’s what I do best. I believe in God-given talents, and as far as I can tell, writing is mine. To be clear, saying I have a God-given talent doesn’t mean I think I’m destined to be the world’s greatest writer. It simply means that I’m supposed to write. It’s the only thing I do where there is no sense of time. When I’m writing, hours pass like seconds. I love that surreal feeling."

- Susan Ouellette

"If you have that creative urge to write, then do it. And do it with complete commitment so that at the end of your life you can say, ‘Look what I did!'"

- Susan Wingate

"Be true to your own voice. Tell the stories that you need to tell. They will haunt you if you do not."

- J. G. MacLeod

"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

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."

- Benjamin Franklin

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."

- Ray Bradbury

"I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn."

- Anne Frank

"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

"You can make anything by writing."

- C.S. Lewis

"To survive, you must tell stories."

- Umberto Eco

"I write to discover what I know."

- Flannery O'Connor

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."

- John Steinbeck

"Writers live twice."

- Natalie Goldberg

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good."

- William Faulkner

"Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got."

- Philip José Farmer

"He asked, “What makes a man a writer?” “Well,” I said, “it’s simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.”"

- Charles Bukowski

"Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things–childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves–that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers."

- Salman Rushdie

"I wish I would have known this as a young writer: always think your writing sucks. If you are really committed to being an author, this mainframe will do one thing—always make you strive to be better."

- Jason Offut

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

- Terry Pratchett

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

- Kate DiCamillo

"Yes, some of my works have been rejected, but I write for myself, have fun with it, and don’t worry about it."

- Gail Cushman

"Read, read, read. Write, write, write. Paint, paint, paint. Dance, dance, dance. Practice, practice, practice. My mother used to say, “Good, better, best…never let it rest…until the good is better and the better is best.”"

- Becky Lyles

"Unless you’re Steven King or J.K. Rowling, rejection goes with the territory, and I’m always confident the next publisher will accept my manuscript. Or maybe the next. Or . . ."

- Mark Reutlinger

"Absolutely—do it. But make sure you’re in it for the right reasons. You have to love writing. You have to love creating a story, creating characters. If your goal is strictly money or to become that NY Times bestselling author, you could be setting yourself up for grave disappointment."

- C. S. McDonald

"Half my life is an act of revision."

- John Irving

"Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."

- Mary Oliver

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."

- Jack Kerouac

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."

- Robert Frost

"Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced."

- Aldous Huxley

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

- Henry David Thoreau

"The difference between real life and a story is that life has _significance_, while a story must have _meaning_. The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end."

- Vera Nazarian

"Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences."

- Sylvia Plath

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."

- William Wordsworth

"Write what should not be forgotten."

- Isabel Allende

"A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him."

- Dylan Thomas

"Tears are words that need to be written."

- Paulo Coelho

"No need to force yourself to do something the “right way” if it’s not your right way. Your job is to honor your process."

- Andi Cumbo

"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way."

- Ernest Hemingway

"It unfolds as you write it. That’s something I never believed before I wrote a book, but it does."

- Joan Didion

"A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, ‘Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here.’"

- Quentin Tarantino

"When you’re stuck, go back to your characters’ motivations."

- David Mamet

"A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world."

- Susan Sontag

"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night."

- Dylan Thomas

"I’ve always felt that the more personal you get, the more universal the application, rather than the other way around. If you begin to address yourself to the masses like that, then I suppose you could have a hit, but to me the more accurate you get about your situation, then the more accessible it is to other people."

- Leonard Cohen

"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster."

- Isaac Asimov

"Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."

- Anton Chekhov

"I write one page of masterpiece to 91 pages of $@*#. I try to put the $@*# in the wastebasket."

- Ernest Hemingway

"One should use common words to say uncommon things"

- Arthur Schopenhauer

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."

- Haruki Murakami

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you."

- Beatrix Potter

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."

- John Steinbeck

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

- Terry Brooks

"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

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

- Thomas Jefferson

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

- E.B. White

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions."

- James Michener

"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

"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme."

- Herman Melville

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

- Ray Bradbury

"For me, writing is as natural as breathing and the longer I go without being creative, the worse I feel. Sometimes the only way to release those blocks is by actually sitting down and writing out the frustration."

- Diane Bator

"Writing is its own reward."

- Henry Miller

"I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged."

- Erica Jong

"A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Always be a poet, even in prose."

- Charles Baudelaire

"A good writer refuses to be socialized. He insists on his own version of things, his own consciousness. And by doing so he draws the reader’s eye from its usual groove into a new way of seeing things."

- Bill Barich

"If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative."

- Elmore Leonard

"Address the people you seek, and them only."

- Claude C. Hopkins

"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

- Thomas Mann

"When I write, I give people access to their own emotions."

- Gord Downie

"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

"My creative muse is wabi-sabi, a practice where inessentials are trimmed away or eliminated. The intersection where wabi (minimal) and sabi (functional) meet is the platform for my creativity: space and quiet solitude, simplicity."

- Laurie Buchanan

"You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write."

- Saul Bellow

"Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing."

- Norman Mailer

"For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word."

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

"That's the thing about books, they let you travel without moving your feet."

- Jhumpa Lahiri

"I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

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

- Ernest Hemingway

"I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

- Blaise Pascal

"Words are a lens to focus one’s mind."

- Ayn Rand

"I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within."

- Gustave Flaubert

"Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it."

- Flannery O'Connor

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

- Dorothy Parker

"A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God."

- Sidney Sheldon

"Nothing’s going too far. Whenever I get to the point where I think things are going too far, I know I have to go there."

- Chuck Palahniuk

"Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money."

- Virginia Woolf

"I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion."

- Yohji Yamamoto

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

- Douglas Adams

"Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one."

- Salman Rushdie

"Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish."

- Hermann Hesse

"The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships."

- Leo Burnett

"Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened."

- George Orwell

"I prefer to be on the side of losers, the misunderstood or lonely people rather than writing about the strong and powerful."

- Núria Añó

"Italics provide a wonderful advantage: you see, right away, that the words are in a rush. When something exists at a slant, you can’t help but consider irony."

- Ann Beattie

"When you make music or write or create, it’s really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you’re writing about at the time."

- Lady Gaga

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being."

- A. A. Milne

"Give me books, fruit, French wine, fine weather and a little music."

- John Keats