Quotes

Here is a slew of them, not all of them are specific to writing, but, still most of them are inspirational to the creative process, to living itself, and therefore, to writing:


”The first draft of everything is shit.”
~Ernest Hemingway
   
“Other people's opinion of you does not have to become your reality.”
~Les Brown

”I've never had a day where I couldn't write 15 pages. Some days it's horrible, some days I don't know what language it's in, but I know I'll go back to it and fix it up.”
~R.L. Stint

”Most people don't know what they want or feel. And for everyone, myself included, Its very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself,to express what you have to…As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad - to be willing to risk everything to really express it all.”
~John Cassavetes

”We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.”
~Seneca

 ”Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is, in the boredom and the pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness. Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, for in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
~Frederick Buechner

”Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”
~Christopher Morley

”There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium. It will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions.”
~Martha Graham

“We're so engaged in doing things to acheive purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.”
~Joseph Campbell

”Because of their courage, their lack of fear, they (creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes. The truly creative person is one who can think such a person knows full well that many of his great ideas will prove to be worthless. The creative person is flexible – he is able to change as the situation changes, to break habits, to face indecision and changes in conditions without undue stress. He is not threatened by the unexpected as rigid, inflexible people are.”
~Frank Goble

”You just sit down and write every day for 3 or 4 hours. You do it like piano scales until you have a story to tell.”
~Anne Lamott

 ”... only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.”
~Anton Chekhov

”To look a fool is the secret of a wise man.”
~Edgar Allen Poe

”A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightening.”
~James Dickey

“If I had to live my life again, I would make a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use.”
~Charles Darwin

”One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a better place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.”
~Annie Dillard

”This is your life. You are responsible for it. You won't live forever. Don't wait.”
~Natalie Goldberg

”A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.”
~Kafka

“Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing.”
~Helen Keller


”We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
~Nietzsche

”You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else. Any work that you do that isn't writing is taking you away from writing.”
~Grace Paley


”Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.”
~Gloria Steinem


”Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
~Vincent van Gogh

”There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.”
~Vincent Van Gogh