Creative Writing Quotes

I have included some of my favourite creative writing quotes on this page, numbered for easy reference. I'll add more as I come across them, but if you'd like to see others here, don't hesitate to send good writing quotatations to me for inclusion.

Reading through writing quotations has always inspired me to write, even on those days when I think we've reached a literary saturation point, with enough books in stores and libraries to keep all of us reading until the day we die. When I read writing quotations like these I become creative. Creative writing quotes remind me that writing is about thinking and about sifting through the thoughts of others in search of that elusive something that will trigger our own ability to articulate the truth as we see and imagine it. Writing forces me to clarify my thoughts, and that alone provides reason enough to sit at the computer.

So...if you are here as a reader, welcome! But if you are a writer, particularly one who needs a reason to get excited about writing again, I hope these creative writing quotes will inspire you as they inspire me!

Creative Writing Quotes 1 - 10

1. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. ~ Ben Franklin

2. What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. ~ Samuel Johnson

3. On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away. ~ Annie Dillard

   

4. 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

5. Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs. ~ John Osborne

6. To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. ~ Elbert Hubbard

7. I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts. ~ John Locke

8. We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. ~ Ernest Hemingway

9. The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. ~ Edwin Schlossberg

10. If writers stopped writing about what happened to them, then there would be a lot of empty pages. ~ Elaine Liner

    Creative Writing Quotes 11 - 20

11. I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~ Elmore Leonard

12. The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time. ~ George Bernard Shaw

13. The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. ~ Anaïs Nin

14. If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ~ Toni Morrison

15. Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~ William Wordsworth

16. Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~ Anton Chekhov

17. Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. ~ Orson Scott Card

18. I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter. ~ James Michener

19. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. ~ Mark Twain

20. Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~ Mark Twain

    Creative Writing Quotes 21 - 30

21. To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make. ~ Truman Capote

22. When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. ~ Enrique Jardiel Poncela

23. Writing comes more easily if you have something to say. ~ Sholem Asch

24. I'd rather be caught holding up a bank than stealing so much as a two-word phrase from another writer. ~ Jack Smith

25. Writing is a struggle against silence. ~ Carlos Fuentes

26. The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation. ~ Elias Canetti

27. Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. ~ E.L. Doctorow

28. The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

29. Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head. ~ From the movie Finding Forrester

30. Writing is both mask and unveiling. ~ E.B. White

    Creative Writing Quotes 31 - 40

31. I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. ~ Oscar Wilde

32. If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write. ~ Stephen King

33. Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

34. A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

35. A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to. ~ Tom Bissell

36. If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves. ~Don Marquis

37. A man will turn over half a library to make one book. ~ Samuel Johnson

38. No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published. ~ Russell Lynes

39. A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~ Thomas Mann

40. An author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.~ Colette

    Creative Writing Quotes 41 - 50

41. The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax. ~ Alfred Kazin

42. I do not like to write - I like to have written. ~ Gloria Steinem

43. One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~ Hart Crane

44. The best style is the style you don't notice. ~ Somerset Maugham

45. Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.~ Leo Tolstoy

46. Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.~ David Sedaris

47. A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.~ Edith Wharton

48. The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. ~ Edwin Schlossberg

49. I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.~ Pearl S. Buck

50. If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see. ~ Willa Cather

    Creative Writing Quotes 51 - 60

51. Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. ~ Scott Adams

52. The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. ~ Tom Clancy

53. Becoming a writer means being creative enough to find the time and the place in your life for writing.~ Heather Sellers

54. Like most—maybe all— writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books. ~ Francine Prose

55. We have always learned about life by dramatising our questions. ~ Celia Brayfield

56. The writer, like everyone else, is equipped in infancy with a thick padding of things he believes to be true, but which aren't. ~ Jon Franklin

57. Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. ~ Jules Renard

58. Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. ~ Franz Kafka

59. One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~ Hart Crane

60. If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you. ~ Oscar Wilde

    Creative Writing Quotes 61 - 70

61. Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself—it is the occurring which is difficult. ~ Stephen Leacock

62. Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished. ~ William Wordsworth

63. The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.~ Natalie Goldberg

64. If you can't play all the instruments in the orchestra of story, no matter what music may be in your imagination, you're condemned to hum the same old tune. ~ Robert McKee

65. The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say. ~ Milan Kundera

66. Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork.~ Joyce Carol Oates

67. Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.~ William Ralph Inge

68. Fiction is a pack of lies that masquerades as truth. Don't risk spoiling your carefully crafted lies with too much truth—or with too little.~ Randy Ingermanson

69. Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life. ~ Lawrence Kasdan

70. Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself. ~ Truman Capote
    
    

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I'd like to make this the most comprehensive page of creative writing quotations on the web. If you have a memorable favourite, please share it here!

Click on the author's name to see the full creative writing quote:

Elie Wiesel  Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

Ihab Hassan  Something in the act of good writing, of writing and endless rewriting, perhaps the fierce genius of language itself, burns off the human dross and lets ...

William Blake  There is no mistake so great as the mistake of not going on.

Kurt Vonnegut  I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.

Kurt Vonnegut  Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they ...

Kurt Vonnegut  Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge ...

Malcolm Gladwell  Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to ...

Jorge Luis Borges  A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes ...

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.

Hermann Hesse  Without words, without writing and without books, there would be no history, there would be no humanity.

Joyce Carol Oates  Don't cast sidelong glances, and compare yourself to others among your peers! (Writing is not a race. No one really "wins." The satisfaction is in the ...

Ayn Rand  My basic test for any story is: "Would I want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is this story an experience worth living ...

Daphne Du Maurier  Writers should be read—but neither seen nor heard.

Samuel Johnson  I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Colette  Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without ...

Molière  Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.

Deena Metzger  For those who do not wish to step away from consensus, the creative is useless at best; at worst, it is dangerous.

Ray Bradbury  If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like ...

John Barth  My feeling about technique in art is that it has the same value as technique in lovemaking. That is to say, heartfelt ineptitude has its charm and so has ...

Judy Blume  Sometimes I think I don’t want to write anymore; it’s too hard, it’s too painful, but I’m happiest when I’m locked up in that little room inventing characters ...

Mark Twain  The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

Mark Twain  My works are like water, the works of the great masters are like wine; but everyone drinks water.