Don’t you just love quotes? The ones that inspire you, make you laugh or give a pause to think? I’ve compiled a short list for you here. If there are days when the writing page is blank, choose one of these to copy to the top of your page. Respond to it. There, you’re off and writing!
At the end of the list, please add your favorite quotes in the comment section. Here they are:
“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is…the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
—Mark Twain
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
—Ernest Hemingway
“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”
—Samuel Johnson
“Writers live twice.”
—Natalie Goldberg
“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature.”
—Ernest Hemingway
“A book is simply the container of an idea—like a bottle; what is inside the book is what matters.”
—Angela Carter
“Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.”
—Annie Dillard
“When I say work I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.”
—Margaret Laurence
“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
—Elmore Leonard
“You do not have to explain every single drop of water contained in a rain barrel. You have to explain one drop—H2O. The reader will get it.”
—George Singleton
“Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at 15 to write several novels.”
—May Sarton
“I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.”
—William Carlos Williams
“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.”
—Andre Gide
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
—Ernest Hemingway
“Writers are always selling somebody out.”
—Joan Didion
“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”
—Robert A. Heinlein
“Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk—away from any open flames—to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.”
—George Singleton
“There is only one plot—things are not what they seem.”
—Jim Thompson
“Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at 15 to write several novels.”
—May Sarton
“I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.”
—William Carlos Williams
“Long patience and application saturated with your heart’s blood—you will either write or you will not—and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try.”
—Jim Tully, October 1923