Quotes For Writers

Sorry about my prolonged absence!  I've been gone on and off so many times this summer that I lost track of when I was supposed to post.  So, here it goes! 

The post title says it all. Here are some of my favorite quotes on writing:

“If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.”
― Lemony Snicket

“So what? All writers are lunatics!”
― Cornelia Funke

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

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
― Stephen King

“Someone needs to tell those tales...There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words.”
― Erin Morgenstern

“The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it’s difficult to discern whether or not they are genuine.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
― J.K. Rowling

“Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.”
― Jack London

“Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.”
― Steve Martin

“we write every day, we fight every day, we think and scheme and dream a little dream every day. manuscripts pile up in the kitchen sink, run-on sentences dangle around our necks. we plant purple prose in our gardens and snip the adverbs only to thread them in our hair. we write with no guarantees, no certainties, no promises of what might come and we do it anyway. this is who we are.”
― Tahereh Mafi (No caps because that's how Tahereh Mafi blogs. And yet her blog is still awesome, because she neglects capitalization with style.)

“Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.”
― George R.R. Martin

I want to blow this up really big and put it on my ceiling,
above my bed.

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
― Mark Twain

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
― Saul Bellow

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
― Robert Frost

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King

"A writer writes not because they like to write, but because writing is something that is ingrained in every fiber of their being."
― Me (from this blog post)

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
― William Faulkner

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.”
― Meg Cabot

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
― John Steinbeck

“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.”
― Anaïs Nin

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I want to gather up all the ink cartridges in the universe, because somewhere, mixed in with all that ink, is the next great American novel. And I’d love nothing more than to drink it.”
― Jarod Kintz

"One does not simply write a novel. It is folly."
― Creative Writing Cat

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
― Markus Zusak

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
― Thomas Mann

And my all-time favorite:
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
― Stephen King

You can learn quite a bit from quotes. There are many, many more out there, if you just search "quotes on writing". And no, I'm not an advertiser for Stephen King. I've never read a book by him. I just think he has good quotes on writing.

And yes, I had to throw in the Lincoln one.

What are your favorite quotes on writing?

This post was originally published at The Epic, the Awesome, and the Random.