Writing Quotes

Here are some of my favorite writing quotes, in no particular order. Well, the first 2 are 2 of my very very favorites, but the others are in no order.


"The Muse cannot resist a working writer." -Ray Bradbury

"Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul." –M.K. Simmons

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." -Anton Chekhov

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart." -William Wordsworth

"I do a first draft as passionately and as quickly as I can. I believe a story is valid only when it's immediate and passionate, when it dances out of your subconscious. If you interfere in any way, you destroy it. ... Let your characters have their way. Let your secret life be lived." -Ray Bradbury

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” -E. L. Doctorow

"Shut up and write" -Natalie Goldberg

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

"The coroner will find ink in my veins and blood on my typewriter keys." -C. Astrid Weber

"An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere." -Gustave Flaubert

"I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die." -Isaac Asimov

"If I were told I only had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster." -Isaac Asimov

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." -Jack London

"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

“I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.”
 –Frank Lloyd Wright

“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”
 -Mark Twain

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." -Mark Twain

"Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." -Gene Fowlern

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in a human condition” - -Graham Greene.

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” - -Saul Bellow

"You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it's going to be too difficult for adults, you write it for children." -Madeleine L'Engle

"Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for." -Ray Bradbury