Quotes on Writing

Whoever said that writing was easy clearly never wrote anything worthwhile. Whenever I get low about my lack of success, I remember that the greats weren’t always great. They too papered their walls with rejection slips. Check out the quotes below, said by those who lived, breathed and dreamt writing! So have a laugh and know that you are in good company.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”- Maya Angelou

“It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.”- Robert Benchley

“Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.”- Truman Capote

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

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

“Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.”- Harper Lee

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

"People without hope do not write novels. Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system."- Flannery O'Connor

“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

“I hate writing, I love having written.”- Dorothy Parker

“Writers are made, not born. To be exact, writers are self-made.” - Ayn Rand

“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.”- Sidney Sheldon

“Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.”- Elie Wiesel