Inspiring Writing Quotes

I hope one of these will inspire you as they have inspired me.

Inspiring Quotes on Writing

If you would not be forgotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson


[The poet] is isolated among his contemporaries by truth and by his art, but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. For all men live by truth and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, from The Poet


Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
--Albert Einstein


Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
--Robert Frost


Words are just words until a poet gives them life.
--Shirley Mikkelson


Know the rules, and the rules will make you free.
--Orson Scott Card


The most unfortunate thing that happens to a person who fears failure is that he limits himself by becoming afraid to try anything new.
--Unknown


I never blame failure . . . but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort.
--Fitzgerald

If one keeps on loving faithfully what is really worth loving, and does not waste ones love on insignificant and unworthy and meaningless things, one will get more light by and by and grow stronger. Sometimes it is well to go into the world and converse with people, and at times one is obliged to do so, but he who would prefer to be quietly alone with his work, and who wants but very few friends, will go safest through the world and among people. And even in the most refined circles and with the best surroundings and circumstances, one must keep something of the original character of an anchorite, for otherwise one has no root in oneself; one must never let the fire go out in one’s soul, but keep it burning. And whoever chooses poverty for himself and loves it possesses a great treasure, and will always clearly hear the voice of his conscience; he who hears and obeys that voice, which is the best gift of God, finds at last a friend in it, and is never alone.
--Vincent Van Gogh, from Dear Theo


If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
--Henry David Thoreau


If you really want to get published, you will.
--Ann E. Cannon


There’s a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises, and you might not even be able to uncompromise yourself. If you write for life, you’ll work hard; you’ll do what’s honest, not what pays.
--Toni Morrison


Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater.
--Epictetus

Writing is a calling, but publishing is a business.
--Michael Larocca

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
--Ernest Hemingway

Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing and it becomes chronic in their sick minds.
--Juvenal (AD 60-130)

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's works is all I can permit myself to contemplate.
--John Steinbeck

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
--Mark Twain

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
--Ray Bradbury