27 Inspiring Quotes To Unleash the Awesome Writer in You
Your daily pep talk to jump start your creativity
Do you ever struggle to sit down at your desk and just write?
You know you should. But sometimes life gets in the way. You just aren’t feeling it. Maybe you even wonder why you got into writing in the first place.
I’ve been there, too. I know how you feel. But if you’re like me, you can’t see yourself giving up writing forever. No way. Maybe you can’t do it every day, but come on — you know you want to.
What you need is a shot in the arm. A boost of confidence. A reminder about why you got into this in the first place. You don’t just want to paint with words, you NEED to do it.
Here are 27 quotes that will help you see yourself as a writer, and give you a jump start into your next masterpiece. Read them every time you doubt yourself. Read them every morning before you write a single word. Add some of your own inspiring quotes to this list. Print it out. Wear it out. Then compile your own list.
If you have a quote you’d like to share, put it in the responses.
I hope this inspires you to reach — and realize — your own greatest creative potential.
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
— Toni Morrison
“You can make anything by writing.”
— C.S. Lewis
“I write to discover what I know.”
— Flannery O’Connor
“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”
— Natalie Goldberg
“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
— Saul Bellow
“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”
— George Orwell
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
— Ray Bradbury
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
— William Wadsworth
“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”
— Anne Frank
“To survive, you must tell stories.”
— Umberto Eco
“Tears are words that need to be written.”
— Paulo Coelho
“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
“Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.”
— W.H. Auden
“I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.”
— Tom Clancy
“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.”
— William Faulkner
“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”
— Ray Bradbury
“Write what should not be forgotten.”
— Isabel Allende
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
— Maya Angelou
“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.”
— Ernest Hemingway
“I start with a question. Then try to answer it.”
— Mary Lee Settle
“I almost always urge people to write in the first person. … Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.”
— William Zinsser
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”
— Isaac Asimov
“Be courageous and try to write in a way that scares you a little.”
— Holley Gerth
“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”
— William H. Gass
“There is only one plot — things are not what they seem.”
— Jim Thompson
“Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic.”
— J. K. Rowling
