Writing Quotes to Help you Create your Best Work

Our latest collection of writing quotes on Everyday Power.

Writing is the primary basis upon which communication, history, record keeping, and art is based.

Writing is the framework of our communication and we encounter it every day of our lives.

Without writing, the flow of ideas would be halted shortly beyond the source.

Writing has always been extremely important in society.

Communications are transmitted more through writing than any other type of media.

There are various ways in which writing empowers us.

It can help improve our problem solving and critical thinking skills,  develop the integration of process, content, and skills as well as increase decision-making abilities.

Knowing that we matter, our voices matter and our experiences matter gives us Everyday Power.

In that regard, here are some inspirational writing quotes.

Check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily inspiration. 

If you enjoy this collection, check out our inspirational quotes category page.

Writing Quotes to Help you Create your Best Work

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

2.) “All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.”—Steve Almond

3.) “To defend what you’ve written is a sign that you are alive.”—William Zinsser

4.) “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou

5.) “A word after a word after a word is power.”–Margaret Atwood

6.) “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”–Anaïs Nin

7.) “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”–Aldous Huxley

8.) “Writing is easy. Just sit down and open a vein.” – Red Barber

9.) “As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.”― Ernest Hemingway

10.) A poet can survive everything but a misprint.– Oscar Wilde

Writing quotes to inspire creativity

11.) History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” ― Winston S. Churchill

12.)“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”—Stephen King (see more quotes from Stephen King)

13.) “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” ― Douglas Adams

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

15.) “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” ― Robert Frost

16.) “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” ― Ernest Hemingway

17.) Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession and therefore are most economical in its use.
– Mark Twain

18.) “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” ― William Wordsworth

19.) “Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.” ― Philip José Farmer

20.) Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the backyard and shot it.– Truman Capote

Inspiring writing quotes by famous writers

21.) “A sentence should never be cruel and unusual.” — William C. Burton

22.) “If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” — Albert Einstein

23.) “No compulsion in the world is stronger than the urge to edit someone else’s document.” — H. G. Wells

24.) You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” ― Jack London

25.) “Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.”—Philip Roth

26.) “The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.” ― William H. Gass

If you’re enjoying these quotes, you’ll love our collection of Alchemist quotes that will inspire you to follow your destiny.

27.) 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 – Anais Nin

28.) “Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” ― Stephen King

29.) A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends – Friedrich Nietzsche

30.) “If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.” ― Kingsley Amis

Writing quotes to give you the inspiration you need to get started

31.) “I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.”—Roald Dahl

32.) “Let us answer a book of ink with a book of flesh and blood.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

33.) “Write what should not be forgotten.” ― Isabel Allende

34.) The chief enemy of creativity is good sense – Pablo Picasso

35.) Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead – Gene Fowler

36.) “My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.” ― Ernest Hemingway

37.) “If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.” – T.S. Eliot

38.) “Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.” – Salman Rushdie

39.) “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” – Stephen King

40.) “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” ― Stephen King

Inspirational writing quotes about life

41.) “Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.”—Ray Bradbury

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

43.) “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ― Ernest Hemingway

44.) “There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” ― Frank Herbert

45.) Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.– Willa Cather

46.) “Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.”—E. M. Forster

47.) “You always get more respect when you don’t have a happy ending.” ― Julia Quinn

48.) “Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.” ― Christopher Hitchens

49.) “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

50.) “For me, writing is exploration; and most of the time, I’m surprised where the journey takes me.” – Jack Dann

Other inspirational writing quotes

51.) Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” – Anton Chekov

52.) I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.” – Joss Whedon

53.) “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” ― Virginia Woolf
If you’re enjoying these quotes, you’ll love our collection of Virginia Woolf quotes that will help you understand life itself.

54.) “Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.” ― Ray Bradbury

55.) “The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer

56.) “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, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.” ― Graham Greene

57.) “You can fix anything but a blank page.” ― Nora Roberts

58.) “Ideas aren’t magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down. ”
― Lynn Abbey

59.) “It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” ― Ernest Hemingway (see all Ernest Hemingway quotes)

60.) “Writing is a job, a talent, but it’s also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.” ― Ann Patchett

More writing quotes and sayings

61. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison

62. “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” – Jack Kerouac

63. “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” – Louis L’Amour

64. “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau

65. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” – Stephen King

66. “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” – Anne Frank

67. “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” – Stephen King

68. “Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” – Jules Renard

69. “If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” – Martin Luther

70. “Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” – Gloria Steinem

Writing Quotes To Perfect Your Skills

71. “Becoming a writer means being creative enough to find the time and the place in your life for writing.” — Heather Sellers
72. “Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.” — Eudora Welty
73. “Be willing to write really badly.” — Jennifer Egan
74. “A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” — Thomas Mann
75. “It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.” — P.D. James
76. “By writing much, one learns to write well.” — Robert Southey
77. “I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on until I am.” — Jane Austen
78. “Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.” — Natalie Goldberg
79. “When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.” — Enrique Jardiel Poncela
80. “Anyone who says writing is easy isn’t doing it right.” — Amy Joy

Which are your favorite writing quotes?

Writing is a complex process.

Though it’s empowering, the whole process of writing might appear mysterious and inaccessible to some.

Hopefully, these quotes have reminded you of the importance of writing and inspired you to create your best work.

Did you enjoy these writing quotes?

Which of the quotes was your favorite?

Tell us in the comment section below.

We would love to hear all about it.