Famous

Inspirational
Funny
Deep
Wise
50 + 1
Writing Quotes
volume I
“ Start writing, no matter what.

”
The water does not ow until the faucet is turned on.

Louis L’Amour
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Introduction

Whenever it is for passion, for a burning necessity or for hopes of fame

and fortune, writing is a precious tool we all have at our ngertips.

A tool of many facets and uses, but perhaps more importantly writing is
an unending process of exploring and learning about ourselves.

With this rst volume of Writing Quotes, we have divided them into ve
categories: Famous, Inspirational, Funny, Deep, Wise.

We sincerely hope you’ll be inspired by the wisdom of these great

authors.
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Famous
Inspirational
Funny
Deep
Wise
“ Writing for me is a kind of compulsion,
so I don’t think anyone could have made me do it,

”
or prevented me from doing it.

J.K. Rowling
“ Lock up your libraries if you like;
but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set

”
upon the freedom of my mind.

Virginia Woolf
“ You can write nothing of value unless you give yourself
wholly to the theme – and when you so give yourself –

”
you lose appetite and sleep – it cannot be helped.

Charlotte Brontë
“ We have to continually be jumping o cli s

”
and developing our wings on the way down.

Kurt Vonnegut

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“ Either write something worth reading

”
or do something worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin
“ The very reason I write is so that

”
I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.

Zadie Smith
“ History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

Winston Churchill
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“ The most beautiful things are those that

”
madness prompts and reason writes.

Andre Gide
“ Write drunk, edit sober.

Ernest Hemin way

”
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“ If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Elmore Leonard
”
“ The pain you feel when you write is actually

”
the pain of clarifying your thinking.

David Perell
Famous
Inspirational
Funny
Deep
Wise
“ Shoot for the top, always.
You might not make it, but what’s the fun if you don’t

”
shoot for the top?

Ursula K. Le Guin
“ The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous
feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink

”
and clamouring to become visible.

Vladimir Nabokov
“ You don’t start out writing good stu . You start out
writing crap and thinking it’s good stu , and then
gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the

”
most valuable traits is persistence.

Octavia E. Butler
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“ Unwritten thoughts slip away like last night’s dreams.
A good sentence can carry the light of insight,

”
undimmed, across years, decades, and centuries.

The Stoic Emperor

“ 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
“ 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 Ka a
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 “ Be strategic and resilient in the pursuit of your dreams.
That sounds like a cheesy quote, right? But nah, I’m
serious. Resilience is one hell of a quality to master

”
and not many have the skin for it.

Ti any D. Jackson
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“ A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.

Richard Bach
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“ The main rule of writing is that
if you do it with enough assurance and con dence,

”
you’re allowed to do whatever you like.

Neil Gaiman

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“ Get it down. Take chances.
It may be bad, but it’s the only way

”
you can do anything really good.

William Faulkner
“ It’s none of their business
that you have to learn to write.

”
Let them think you were born that way.

Ernest Hemin way

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“ You wanna y,

”
you got to give up the sh*t that weighs you down.

Toni Morrison
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Famous
Inspirational
Funny
Deep
Wise
“ I love deadlines.

”
I like the whooshing sound they make as they y by.

Douglas Adams

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“ Cut out all those exclamation marks.

”
An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
“ Writing a book is like telling a joke and having

”
to wait 2 years to know whether or not it was funny.

Alain de Botton
“ The freelance writer is a man who is paid

”
per piece or per word or perhaps.

Robert Benchley
“ No passion in the world is equal

”
to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.

H. G. Wells
“ If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live,

”
I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

Isaac Isimov
“ Writing is often the process by which
you realize that you do not understand

”
what you are talking about.

Shane Parrish
“ No author dislikes to be edited

”
as much as he dislikes not to be published.

Russell Lynes
“ Many people hear voices when no one is there.
Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms
where they stare at the walls all day.
Others are called writers

”
and they do pretty much the same thing.

Margaret Chittenden
“ Writing is like sex. First you do it for love,
then you do it for your friends,

”
and then you do it for money.

Virginia Woolf
Famous
Inspirational
Funny
Deep
Wise
“ Don’t expect the puppets of your mind to become
the people of your story. If they are not realities in
your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy
in ink and paper that will turn wooden gures

”
into esh and blood.

Leslie Gordon Barnard

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“ Writing is something you do alone.
It’s a profession for introverts
who wanna tell you a story

”
but don’t wanna make eye contact while telling it.

John Green
“ Whether we are describing a king, an assassin,
a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun,
a young girl, or a stallholder in a market,

”
it is always ourselves that we are describing.

Guy De Maupassant
“ Of your unspoken words, you are the master;
of your spoken words, the servant;

”
of your written words, the slave.

Quaker proverb
“ I almost always urge people to write
in the rst person. Writing is an act of ego

”
and you might as well admit it.

William Zinsser
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“ Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men
who have minded beyond reason

”
the opinions of others.

Virginia Woolf
“ The story must strike a nerve — in me.
My heart should start pounding
when I hear the rst line in my head.

”
I start trembling at the risk.

Susan Sontag
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“ How vain it is to sit down to write

”
when you have not stood up to live.

Henry David Thoreau

“ Everywhere I go,
I’m asked if the universities sti e writers.

”
My opinion is that they don’t sti e enough of them.

Flannery O’Connor
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“ Forget your personal tragedy.
We are all bitched from the start
and you especially have to be hurt like hell
before you can write seriously. But when you get the

”
damned hurt use it – don’t cheat with it.

Ernest Hemin way

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Famous
Inspirational
Funny
Deep
Wise
“ As a writer, you should not judge,

”
you should understand.

Ernest Hemin way

g
“ Stories may well be lies,
but they are good lies that say true things,

”
and which can sometimes pay the rent.

Neil Gaiman
“ Hard writing makes easy reading.

”
Easy writing makes hard reading.

William Zinsser
“ If it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of
everything, don’t do it. Unless it comes unasked
out of your heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut, don’t do it.

Charles Bukowski
”
“ No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

”
No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

Robert Frost
“ Great is the art of beginning,

”
but greater is the art of ending.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“ 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
“ Write what should not be forgotten.

Isabel Allende
”
“ Good things, when short, are twice as good.

Baltasar Gracián
”
“ If you want to change the world,

”
pick up your pen and write.

Martin Luther
Conclusion

This collection of quotes is an initiative of Writing Competitions, an

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for all writers worldwide.

Our motto has always been, “The world needs beauty, writing is a way
to promote it.”

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