Writing Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old writing quotes, writing sayings, and writing proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it. Harold Acton
People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it. Harlan Ellison
The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium. Norbet Platt
I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. Anne Frank
Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use. Mark Twain
I don't know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, it's always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon, sans anesthesia. As a memoirist, you have to crack your head open and examine every uncomfortable thing in there. Koren Zailckas
Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. Louis L'Amour
Be ruthless about protecting writing days, do not cave in to endless requests to have essential and long overdue meetings on those days. J. K. Rowling
Writing is a delicious agony. Gwendolyn Brooks
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. Sylvia Plath
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. Anais Nin
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. Ernest Hemingway
I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly. Edgar Rice Burroughs
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. Benjamin Franklin
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. Toni Morrison
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Maya Angelou
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. Russell Baker
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers. Isaac Asimov
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. Robert Frost
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. Ray Bradbury
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
Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches. Andy Warhol
I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be. Ayn Rand
Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you figure out what you have to say. Barbara Kingsolver
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. 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. Barbara Kingsolver
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once. Cyril Connolly
Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. E. L. Doctorow
Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. E. L. Doctorow
When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. Enrique Jardiel Poncela