Top 100 Quotes About Writing (2025 Update)

1. “There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.”

— Beatrix Potter

2. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Quotes About Books And Reading, Learning Quotes, Creativity Quotes

3. “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

Also featured in: Creativity Quotes, Self-Realization Quotes, Fiction Quotes, Creative Quotes

4. “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

— Louis L'Amour

Also featured in: Persistence Quotes, Short Inspirational Quotes, Taking Action Quotes, Quotes About Trying

5. “This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.”

— Neil Gaiman

Also featured in: Creativity Quotes, Practice Quotes, Creative Quotes, Productivity Quotes

6. “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

— Anton Chekhov

Also featured in: Interesting Quotes, Fiction Quotes, Storytelling Quotes, Short Deep Quotes

7. “You can make anything by writing.”

— C. S. Lewis

Also featured in: Creativity Quotes, Fiction Quotes, Encouragement Quotes

8. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Overcoming Fear Quotes, Quotes About Trying, Creative Quotes

9. “There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”

— Frank Herbert

Also featured in: Fiction Quotes, Storytelling Quotes

10. “You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Courage Quotes, Goal Quotes, Confidence Quotes, Impact Quotes

11. “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

— E. L. Doctorow

Also featured in: Creativity Quotes

12. “Tears are words that need to be written.”

— Paulo Coelho

Also featured in: Interesting Quotes, Quotes About Feelings, Moving Quotes

13. “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”

— Anne Frank

Also featured in: Short Inspiring Quotes, Emotional Quotes, Emotion Quotes, Creative Quotes

14. “Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.”

— Philip José Farmer

Also featured in: Creativity Quotes, Fiction Quotes, Storytelling Quotes

15. “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

— Philip Pullman

Also featured in: Short Inspiring Quotes, Meaningful Quotes, Storytelling Quotes, Quotes About Humanity

16. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Also featured in: Fiction Quotes, Truth Quotes, Short Deep Quotes

17. “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Also featured in: Funny Quotes, Fiction Quotes

18. “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”

— Aldous Huxley

Also featured in: Fiction Quotes, Intelligent Quotes, Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

19. “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”

— Anaïs Nin

Also featured in: Creativity Quotes, Deep Quotes About Life, Emotional Quotes, Fiction Quotes, Emotion Quotes

20. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

— Toni Morrison

Also featured in: Quotes About Books And Reading, Creativity Quotes, Empowering Quotes, Inspiring Quotes

21. “I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind. ”

— Patrick Dennis

22. “I write to discover what I know.”

— Flannery O'Connor

Also featured in: Storytelling Quotes, Knowledge Quotes, Artist Quotes, Creative Quotes

23. “The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”

— Anaïs Nin

Also featured in: Creativity Quotes, Individuality Quotes

24. “You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

— Jack London

Also featured in: Persistence Quotes, Taking Action Quotes, Determination Quotes, Work Hard Quotes

25. “Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.”

— Neil Gaiman

Also featured in: Creativity Quotes, Fiction Quotes, Challenges Quotes, Witty Quotes

26. “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

— Thomas Mann

27. “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.”

— Lloyd Alexander

Also featured in: Fiction Quotes

28. “The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”

— Mark Twain

Also featured in: Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes, Action Quotes, Procrastination Quotes

29. “You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

— Jodi Picoult

Also featured in: Fiction Quotes, Storytelling Quotes, Practice Quotes, Creative Quotes

30. “Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.”

— Neil Gaiman

Also featured in: Storytelling Quotes, Artist Quotes, Creative Quotes, Honesty Quotes

31. “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Creativity Quotes, Fiction Quotes, Storytelling Quotes

32. “Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”

— Ray Bradbury

Also featured in: Storytelling Quotes, Practice Quotes, Quotes About Stories

33. “Nothing can save you except writing. It keeps the walls from failing.”

— Charles Bukowski

Also featured in: Creative Quotes

34. “A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

Also featured in: Storytelling Quotes, Quotes About Stories

35. “When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Storytelling Quotes, Quotes About Stories

36. “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Also featured in: Humility Quotes

37. “Nothing will train you better as a writer than working on your next book.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Also featured in: Practice Quotes, Book Quotes

38. “When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Practice Quotes

39. “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

— George Orwell

Also featured in: Challenges Quotes

40. “The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Fiction Quotes, Imagination Quotes

41. “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Also featured in: Don't Give Up Quotes, Worry Quotes

42. “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

— Ernest Hemingway

43. “You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Encouraging Quotes for Students, Lifelong Learning Quotes, Reading Quotes

44. “Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.”

— Neil Gaiman

Also featured in: Never Give Up Quotes, Consistency Quotes

45. “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”

— Stephen King

46. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”

— Robert Frost

Also featured in: Reading Quotes

47. “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

— Ray Bradbury

Also featured in: Imagination Quotes

48. “Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Fiction Quotes, Quotes About Water

49. “A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Fiction Quotes

50. “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

Also featured in: Inspirational Career Quotes