Top 100 Best Author Quotes on Writing

“The wastepaper basket is the writer’s best friend.”

“No tale tells all.”

“There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are.”

“Writing is not a genteel profession; it’s quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.”

“Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.”

“Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.”

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”

“I never dare to write as funny as I can.”

“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”

“A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life.”

“Never throw up on an editor.”

“Most writers can write books faster than publishers can write checks.”

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

“Be obscure clearly.”

“It takes a heap of sense to write good nonsense.”

“Until you know who you are you can’t write.”

“The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.”

“The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.”

“Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write.”

“It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.”

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”

“The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul—BOOKS.”

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

“I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.”

“The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.”

“Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.”

“Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil—but there is no way around them.”

“Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.”

“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.”

“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.”

“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.”

“The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.”

“First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!”

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.”

“I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.”

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”

“Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.”

“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”

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

“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.”

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

“Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.”

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

“The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.”