100+ Writing Quotes & Sayings

You don’t make art out of good intentions.

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You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.

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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.

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

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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.

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Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

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My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math;in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything.

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We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

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If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

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A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

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

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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.

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I don't think all writers are sad, she said.I think it's the other way around—all sad people write.

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I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.

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You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

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It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

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I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

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Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

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This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.

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If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.

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I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.

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Poems are never finished - just abandoned

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How do I know what I think until I see what I say?

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Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

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I can elect something I love and absorb myself in it.

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If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.

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Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

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The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

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Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

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I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

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Every writer I know has trouble writing.

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Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.

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When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.

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The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.

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When I’m writing my own stuff, it’s like swimming upstream. Or … falling down a cliff and grabbing at branches, trying to invent the branches as I fall.

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If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.

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

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Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

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True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse’.

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A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

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