1. “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.” ― Octavia E. Butler
2. “If the word doesn’t exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn’t exist.” ― Charles Baudelaire
3. “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” ― E. L. Doctorow
4. “Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.” ― Winston Churchill
5. “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” ― Stephen King
6. “Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything good.” ― William Faulkner
7. “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
8. “Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.” ― Hunter S. Thompson
9. “If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.” ― Somerset Maugham
10. “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
11. “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” ― Albert Camus
12. “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” ― Benjamin Franklin
13. “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
14. “I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.“ – Shannon Hale
15. “The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.” ― Arthur Miller
16. “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page“- Jodi Picoult
17. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” – Robert Frost
18. “I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.” ― Robert Frost
19. “Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.” — Larry L. King
20. “Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.” ― Joseph Joubert
21. “Description begins in the writer’s imagination but should finish in the reader’s.” ― Stephen King
22. “If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.” — Peter Handke
23. “I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.” ― Erica Jong
24. “Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.” ― Tennessee Williams
25. “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” ― Terry Pratchett
26. “Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
27. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” ― Stephen King
28. “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” — Richard Bach
29. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” ― Toni Morrison
30. “Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.” — Ray Bradbury
31. “I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.” – Isaac Asimov
32. “Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself.” – Mark Twain
33. “Start before you’re ready.” ― Steven Pressfield
34. “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy.” ― Norman Vincent Peale
35. “Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” – Flannery O’Connor
36. “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” ― Louis L’Amour
37. “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” ― Thomas Jefferson
38. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.” ― Herman Melville
39. “Ideas aren’t magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down. ” ― Lynn Abbey
40. “I get a lot of letters from people. They say,“I want to be a writer. What should I do?“ I tell them to stop writing to me and get on with it.” ― Ruth Rendell
41. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” ― Toni Morrison
42. “I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
43. “You either have to write or you shouldn’t be writing. That’s all.” ― Joss Whedon
44. “Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.“ – Anne McCaffrey
45. “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” ― Margaret Atwood
46. “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 a book.” ― Samuel Johnson
47. “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” ― Jack London
48. “Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.” ― Brenda Ueland
49. “If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!” ― Jackie Collins
50. “If you have no critics, you’ll likely have no success.” ― Malcolm X
51. “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” ― George Orwell
52. “The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.” ― Robert Cormier
53. “If the book is true, it will find an audience that is meant to read it.” ― Wally Lamb
54. “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” ― W. Somerset Maugham
55. “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” ― Stephen King
56. “Ignore all hatred and criticism. Live for what you create, and die protecting it.” ― Lady Gaga
57. “The first draft of anything is shit.” ― Ernest Hemingway
