75 Quotes About Writing for National Novel Writing Month
Whether you're doing NaNoWriMo or just like creative writing, enjoy these quotes!
If you are a writer, you know the joy that comes from expressing yourself on paper. Whether you are journaling, writing an essay or have become a published author, writing can have its challenges. During times of writer's block or lack of inspiration, a little encouragement can do wonders. And there is nothing more inspiring than the wise words that come directly from successful authors. That's why we have compiled this list of writing quotes. Each one of them offers something in the way of encouragement, inspiration, motivation or humor.
Plus, November is known as both National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) and National Memoir Writing Month. So if you've been working on a novel or memoir, this is the perfect time of year to find some extra motivation in the form of these writing quotes from your own favorite writers.
Read through these 75 quotes about writing to re-ignite your passion for writing or to simply give yourself the little nudge that you currently need. You'll find that these famous authors have a lot to say about the stories that need to be told.
Related: How to Do #NaNoWriMo in 2022
Inspiring Quotes About Writing
1. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” — Maya Angelou
2. “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” — Toni Morrison
3. “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” — Ernest Hemingway
4. “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” — Madeleine L'Engle
5. “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.” — Lloyd Alexander
Related: Dr. Nancy Berk’s Tip of The Day: Write Better
6. “Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.” — William Faulkner
7. “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” — Saul Bellow
8. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” — Robert Frost
9. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” — Stephen King
10. “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” — Louis L'Amour
11. “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” — Philip Pullman
12. “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” — Winston S. Churchill
Related: 75 Art Quotes That Speak to the Soul and Inspire Creativity!
13. “Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.” — Neil Gaiman
14. “Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” — Franz Kafka
15. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” — Stephen King
Encouraging Words About Writing
16. “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” — Anne Frank
17. “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” — W. Somerset Maugham
18. “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” — William Wordsworth
19. “A word after a word after a word is power.” — Margaret Atwood
20. “There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.” — Beatrix Potter
21. “Tears are words that need to be written.” — Paulo Coelho
22. “You can make anything by writing.” — C.S. Lewis
23. “You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” — Annie Proulx
24. “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
25. “A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.” — Caroline Gordon
26. “You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” — Jack London
27. “Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.” — Philip José Farmer
28. “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.” — Meg Cabot
29. “Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” — Stephen King
30. “Write what should not be forgotten.” — Isabel Allende
Related: How to Have a First-Ever Writing Session
Wise Words On Writing
31. “I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” — James Michener
32. “Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it." — John Green
33. “The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
34. “All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then
I can turn the world upside down.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
35. “My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.” — Ernest Hemingway
36. “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” — Stephen King
37. “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” — Thomas Jefferson
38. “Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.” — Ray Bradbury
39. “Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.” — Margaret Atwood
40. “Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” — Jules Renard
41. “Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.” — Franz Kafka
42. “Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." — Cyril Connolly
43. “One should use common words to say uncommon things.” — Arthur Schopenhauer
44. “The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.” — Vladimir Nabokov
45. “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” — Flannery O'Connor
Related: Does Your Mental Health Need a Boost? Get Started With These 25 Writing Prompts
Best Quotes About Writing
46. “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” — E.M. Forster
47. “If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” — Martin Luther
48. “Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential.” — Jessamyn West
49. “To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.” — Aristotle
50. “Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.” — Brenda Ueland
51. “It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” — Ernest Hemingway
52. “Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down." — Lynn Abbey
53. “The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.” — Agatha Christie
54. “Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.” — Lisa See
55. “Write about the emotions you fear the most.” — Laurie Halse Anderson
56. “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
57. “If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!” — Jackie Collins
58. “If a story is in you, it has to come out.” — William Faulkner
59. “A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.” — Richard Bach
Related: Write On! How Putting Pen to Paper Can Keep You Sharp
60. “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 pity, and destroy most of it." — Colette
61. “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
62. “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.” — Gustave Flaubert
63. “Don’t give people what they want, give them what they need.” — Joss Whedon
64. “Nothing's a better cure for writer's block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.” — Don Roff
65. “The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
66. “Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.” — George R.R. Martin
67. “You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.” — Truman Capote
68. “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” — Terry Pratchett
69. “The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.” — Benjamin Disraeli
70. “My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.” — Abigail Adams
71. “I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.” — Ann Brashares
72. “You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.” — Jessica Mitford
73. “If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.” — H.G. Wells
74. “The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.” — Iain M. Banks
75. “Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.” — Red Haircrow
