On your way to the top, seek advice from those who’ve done that climb.
Writing can be the most fulfilling and, at the same time, the most frustrating career. On the days when words flow like a bustling waterfall, you feel like you are fulfilling your purpose in life. But there are also the days when you question everything from your talent to your book’s value.
What can bring a ray of sunshine to those dreary days is an inspiration. Absorbing the words of the greatest authors can help you understand that the writer’s journey is full of challenges.
As Nathan Perry, a freelance writer and contributor writer at TrustMyPaper, beautifully said, “No one understands the path you are on better than the people who’d walked on the same road.”
The words of respected writers can give you comfort, motivation, and even useful writing tips. To gain that faith back, get the confidence to publish your book, or strengthen the belief in your published book, turn to these quotes for inspiration.
1. “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
2. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
– Toni Morrison
3. “Writers live twice.”
– Natalie Goldberg
4. “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
– Benjamin Franklin
5. “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”
– Anne Frank
6. “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”
– Richard Bach
7. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
– Robert Frost
8. “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
9. “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
– Henry David Thoreau
10. “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
– John Steinbeck
11. “Always be a poet, even in prose.”
– Charles Baudelaire
12. “Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.”
– William Faulkner
13. “I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
14. “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
– Anaïs Nin
15. “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
– Stephen King
16. “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
– Mark Twain
17. “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
– Saul Bellow
18. “You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”
– Annie Proulx
19. “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.”
– Virginia Woolf
20. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
– Maya Angelou
21. “If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule – a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.”
– John Steinbeck
22. “There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly: sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.”
– Ernest Hemingway
23. “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
– Louis L’Amour
24. “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
– Steven King
25. “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
– Jack Kerouac
Final Thoughts
Don’t doubt your brilliance. Ever. When the insecurity comes along, that’s when these quotes can lift you up. Elizabeth Campbell, a writer and editor at SupremeDissertations, gave excellent advice, “Instead of convincing yourself that you have a writer’s block, allow exceptional writers to assure you that you just need to work harder.” Every writer sometimes needs a reminder of what’s important in writing and how to push through all the troubles. That’s why these quotes are here to give you that winning push.
