We love quotes by other writers, especially quotes about writing. Check out some of these—provided by D. Pacini and Mike Geffner’s blogspot (http://mikeswritingworkshop.blogspot.com). If you’re looking for that perfect quote to end your e-mails or to stay motivated as a writer, here’s a start.
A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
~Thomas Mann
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
~Charles Caleb Colton
Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world.
~Tom Clancy
If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.
~Henry Rollins
The pen is the tongue of the mind.
~Miguel de Cervantes
It’s true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them. ~Anne Tyler
Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.
~Edmund Morrison
Books aren’t written—they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.
~Michael Crichton
It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one’s thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.
~Isabel Colegate
You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist, you are learning your craft—then you can add all the genius you like.
~Phyllis Whitney
Everyone who has ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it that makes a difference.
~Nolan Bushnell
A writer doesn’t solve problems. He allows them to emerge.
~Friedrich Dürrenmatt
There is only one trait that marks the writer. He is always watching. It’s a kind of trick of the mind and he is born with it.
~Morley Callaghan
Writing is the only thing that…when I’m doing it, I don’t feel that I should be doing something else instead.
~Gloria Steinem
If you are pointing out one of the things a story is about, then you are very probably right; if you are pointing out the only thing a story is about you are very probably wrong—even if you’re the author.
~Neil Gaiman
If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.
~Ernest Hemingway
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Nice compilation. This is one more quote I want to add to this list:
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
~ Maya Angelou.