10 Quotes from Famous Writers to Help You Out

By Johannes Helmold

 

Hi everyone!

As it often happens to me, today I got stuck in the middle of writing. As I usually do in such cases, I start to look for quotes by famous writers on writing—they inspire me, and give me confidence to get through writer’s block. I’d like to share some of these quotes with you (well, that’s why there are so many posts with quotes on this website, hehe—I often stumble upon writer’s block).

1. “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
   ― Mark Twain
2. “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
3. “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
   ― Anton Chekhov
4. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
   ― Stephen King
5. “Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.”
   ― Neil Gaiman
6. “You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
   ― Ray Bradbury
7. “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
8. “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
   ― Jack London
9. “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
10. “Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”
    ― F. Scott Fitzgerald

Good luck, and remember: the best way to deal with writer’s block is to bypass it.

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