Great Quotes from Great Writers

Often we run into problems. Obstacles in our writing. Little annoying problems that we aren’t sure what to do about. But others have been there. And here are some great quotes I’ve found over the years that will hopefully be as helpful to you as they were to me!

 

 “At any given moment you have the power to say, this is NOT how the story is going to end.” –Unknown

“We edit to let the fire show through the smoke.” –Arthur Plotnik

“A writer’s life is a strange mix of, “Wow, I wrote THAT?” and “Oh, wow, I wrote that.”” –Unknown

“What doesn’t kill us gives us something new to write about.” –Julie Wright

“Write it so that people can hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.” –Maya Angelou

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard…. Is what makes it great.” –A league of their own

“The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its READER instead of its writer.” –Ladie Smith

“Creativity takes courage.” –Henri Matisse

“Listen to music to find a way into the story you’re telling. Music is incredibly evocative: find the right piece that reflects the world you’re writing about, and you’re halfway there.” –Anthony Neilson

“Treat your secondary characters like they think the book’s about them.” –Jocelyn Hughes

“Writing to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” –Isaac Asimov

“If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” –Seth Godin

“And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things- Childhood, Certainties, Cities, Doubts, Dreams, Instants, Phrases, Parents, Loves- that go on slipping , like sand, through our fingers.” –Salman Rushdie

“Bad decisions make awesome stories…” –Unknown

“Three paragraphs a day, keeps the writer’s block away.” –Unknown

“You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.” –Doris Lessing

“Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.” –Jeanette Winterson

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”
—Allen Ginsberg, WD

“Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.”
—Hunter S. Thompson

“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

“There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.”
—Doris Lessing

“Style is to forget all styles.”
—Jules Renard

“I don’t believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously.”
—Ray Bradbury, WD

Hope these will serve helpful to you! Have a happy new year’s!

 -Hannah W.