How to write

On Writing

“A book has but one voice, but it does not instruct everyone alike.” Thomas Kempis

“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

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

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

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” Stephen King

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

On Inspiration

“I don’t know exactly where ideas come from, but when I’m working well ideas just appear. I’ve heard other people say similar things - so it’s one of the ways I know there’s help and guidance out there. It’s just a matter of our figuring out how to receive the ideas or information that are waiting to be heard.” Jim Henson

“We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success.” Henry David Thoreau

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” Maya Angelou

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

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” Ray Bradbury

“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.” Sylvia Plath

On Motivation

“Inspiration is external and motivation is internal. It is up to be to provide the switch and you to flip it on!” Tricia Cunningham

“Vital lives are about action. You can’t feel warmth unless you create it, can’t feel delight until you play, can’t know serendipity unless you risk.” Joan Erikson

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” Henry David Thoreau

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

“We write in order to live life twice.” Anais Nin

“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.” Rainer Maria Rilke

“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.” Neil Gaiman

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