Quotes to inspire the writer in you

A favorite William Hamilton cartoon shows a young writer confiding to a friend over a glass of wine
”I haven’t actually been published or produced yet. But I have some things professionally typed.”

“To live in the hearts we leave behind is to never die.”
Thomas Campbell

“I write to discover what I know.”
Flannery O’Connor

“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”
Robert Frost

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark by another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”
Albert Schweitzer

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, it turns chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Melody Beattie

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
Meister Eckhardt

“There’s no winning without beginning.”
Bernie Wilt

“Just because you get something doesn’t mean you deserve it. And just because you deserve something doesn’t mean you will get it.”
Condoleezza Rice

“The things I want to express are so beautiful and pure.”
M.C. Escher

P.G. Wodehouse once dedicated a novel to his young children. “Without whose constant love and affection, this book would have been finished in half the time.”

“We will not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
T. S. Eliot

“The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.”
William Faulkner

“I’d rather be a could-be if I cannot be an are; because a could-be is a maybe who is reaching for a star. I’d rather be a has-been than a might-have-been by far; for because a might-have-been has never been, but a has-been was once an are.”
Milton Berle

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
Will Rogers

“Ecstatic is the soul when heart and mind in unison desires to write, to write for self, for others and above all for God, from whom this gift of writing indeed is.”
Vanita George

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”
Cyril Connolly

“Writing loves us. Did you know that? I didn’t! Writing wants to be written. First, though we must be willing to listen. We do not control the writing—the writing controls us. It moves us, frees us, becomes us. We have to be ready to hand the reigns over to it, though. Our job is to PAY ATTENTION and write what we HEAR. Are you LISTENING?”
Hope Wilbanks

“The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say but what we are unable to say.”
Anais Nin

“One of the easiest things in the world is not to write. If it were easy, everyone would do it.”
William Goldman

“Don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty things. Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read”
Groucho Marx

“Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.”
Jessamyn West

“I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking to many, I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of completing a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.”
James A. Michener

“It is not enough to merely love literature, if one wishes to spend one’s life as a writer. It is a dangerous undertaking on the most primitive level. For it seems to me, the act of writing with serious intent involves enormous personal risk. It entails the ongoing courage for self-discovery. It means one will walk forever on the tightrope, with each new step presenting the possibility of learning a truth about oneself that is too terrible to bear.”
Harlan Ellison

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
Albert Einstein

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
Mark Twain

“You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.”
Richard Bach, “Illusions”

“Effort only fully releases its rewards after a person refuses to quit.”
Napolean Hill

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“Editing is human, free-writing is divine!”
Milli Thornton

“A year from now you’ll wished you had started today.”
Maureen Finn

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”
Beverly Sills

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”
James Dean

“It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.”
Sarah Bernhardt

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
George Eliot

“Friends are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly.”
Anonymous

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you can’t tell it about other people.”
Virginia Woolf

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

“No one understands the writer like another writer.”
Anonymous

“If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”
Stephen King

“I would rather be a failure at something I love doing than a success at something I hate to do.”
George Burns

“Wishes come true for those who believe. Dreams come true for those who follow their heart. May you find your happily-ever-after at the end of the rainbow. Never give up on your dreams. Keep dreaming until you ride off into the sunset to the sweet hereafter.”
Sharon Donovan