18+ Quotes about Writing

Quotes about Writing

See also: My Massive Quotes Collection

See also: 18 Things Authors Do

18+ Quotes about Writing

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
— Ray Bradbury, American author and screenwriter (1920 – 2012)

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
— Cicero, Roman statesman, lawyer, orator, and philosopher (106–43 BC)

If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.
— Benjamin Franklin, author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat (1706 – 1790)

Easy reading is damn hard writing.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, American author (1804–1864)

I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.
— Anne Rice, American author (1941 – 2021)

Writing is both mask and unveiling.
— E.B. White or Elwyn Brooks White, American writer, (1899 – 1985)

Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.
— Marsha Norman, American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
— Gustave Flaubert, French novelist (1821 – 1880)

Here’s a quick “rule of thumb”: Don’t annoy science fiction writers. These are people who destroy entire planets before lunch. Think of what they’ll do to you.
— John Scalzi, American science fiction author

A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.
— Susanna Clarke, British author, novelist

When writing the story of your life, don’t let anyone else hold the pen.
— Harley Davidson, American motorcycle company (Established 1903)

Writing is thinking on paper.
— William Knowlton Zinsser, American writer, editor, literary critic, and teacher (1922 – 2015)

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.
— Walter Bagehot, British journalist (1826 – 1877)

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
— W.H. Auden, British-American poet (1907–1973)

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyze yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it.
— Octavia Estelle Butler, American science fiction writer (1947 – 2006)

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
— Gene Fowler, American journalist, author and dramatist (1890 – 1960)

Grasp the subject, the words will follow.
— Cato the Elder, Roman senator, soldier and historian (234–149 BC)

You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.
— Stephen King, American writer

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. It it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
— E.B. White, American writer, (1899 – 1985)

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
— Ernest Hemingway, American author and journalist (1899–1961), The Wild Years