This is a collection of quotes about writing from famous authors. Use it to inspire and motivate you to write your own stories. You may also get a good laugh out of some of the quotes.

Edgar Allan Poe: "Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path."

Ray Bradbury: "Quantity produces quality. If you write only a few things, you’re doomed."

Stephen King: "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut." - from On Writing

Sylvia Path: "And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Ernest Hemingway: "A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book." - from Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961

Toni Morrison: "If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it." (source)

Stephen Cannell: "Writing is not that hard. Make up a good story, then let it flow. Leave the brilliant work to the dead." (Source)

Stephen King: "The road to hell is paved with adverbs." - from On Writing

Julia Quinn: "Finish the book. The world is full of first chapters." (source)

John Green: "People die. That’s true in novels, and it’s true in life. Dying is one of the very few things we all do. To deny or ignore the omnipresent reality of death seems to me a disservice to human beings. That said, acknowledging in my novels that death exists does not make me a murderer any more than acknowledging that cancer can be treated makes me an oncologist. (source)

E.L. Doctorow: "Planning to write is not writing. Outlining ...researching ...talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing." source)

Ernest Heminway: "We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master." - from New York Journal-American (11 July 1961)

George R.R. Martin: "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, the man who never reads lives only one." - from his tweet to which he added, "or dies a thousand deaths...just saying."

Isaac Asimov: "If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster." (source)

J.K. Rowling: "I've no idea where ideas come from and I hope I never find out; it would spoil the excitement for me if it turned out I just have a funny little wrinkle on the surface of my brain which makes me think about invisible train platforms." (source)

Maya Angelou: "I know when it's the best I can do. It may not be the best there is. Another writer may do it much better. But I know when it’s the best I can do." source)

Janet Evanovich: "Inspiration for all my books is always the same. Big mortgage." source)

Nicholas Sparks: "Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period." (source)

Flannery O'Connor: "The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention." (source)

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land." (source)

Mark Twain: "I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself." source)

John Steinbeck: "Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard." (source

Junot Diaz: "In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway." source)

For more quotes visit our Authors on Characters page.