Good Writing Quotes

• The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

  J. K. Rowling

  Writing, Vocabulary, Giving

  33 Copy quote

• Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Skating, Kind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1992). “The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.180, University of Missouri Press

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good writing will bring you to places you don't even expect sometimes.

  James Gandolfini

  Writing, Sometimes

  "James Gandolfini: A subtle, versatile star who left TV in better shape than he found it" by Mark Harris, ew.com. June 19, 2013.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Effort, Needs

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.25, Anchor

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Nature, Rain, Writing

  73 Copy quote
• 

  Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Honesty, Integrity, Writing

  1847; quoted by propagandist and language maven William Safire, New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1998.

  123 Copy quote

  Show source

• The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wisdom, Writing, Procrastination

  Statement on April 14, 1775. "Life of Samuel Johnson". Book by James Boswell. Volume II, 1791.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

  William Faulkner

  Inspiring, Writing, May

  "A Faulkner perspective: a companion-guide to the limited first edition of the Selected letters of William Faulkner".

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've hung out in the writer's room a few times, but the fact is we've got such a good writing staff, I don't want to get my peanut butter fingerprints on anything.

  Patton Oswalt

  Writing, Peanut Butter, Want

  12 Copy quote

• If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.

  David Brin

  Writing, Family Friends, Family Life

  7 Copy quote

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

  Neil Gaiman

  Writing, May, Matter

  "Somewhat Less Sinister Ducks". Personal Website, journal.neilgaiman.com. April 23, 2004.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In good writing, words become one with things.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Writing Words

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1992). “The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.376, University of Missouri Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.

  Richard Harding Davis

  Writing, Old Things, Secret

  18 Copy quote

• A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Reading, Hero

  1905 Heretics, ch.15.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Inspirational, Book, Writing

  All Trivia (1933) "Afterthoughts" pt. 5

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Truth, Book, Reading

  Esquire, Dec. 1934

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

  17 Copy quote

• There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.

  Robert Graves

  Writing, Rewriting

  55 Copy quote

• All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, Swimming, History

  Letter to Frances Scott Fitzgerald (undated)

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good writing is like a windowpane.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Thrive, Windowpane

  11 Copy quote

• The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis.

  William Styron

  Writing, Age, Neurosis

  William Styron, James L. W. West (1985). “Conversations with William Styron”, p.19, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

  Harold Pinter

  Writing, Literature, Life Worth Living

  58 Copy quote

• The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.

  William Styron

  Writing, Age, Literature

  William Styron, James L. W. West (1985). “Conversations with William Styron”, p.19, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Funny, Sarcastic, Writing

  "Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1841-1843".

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Writing, Fleas

  Moby Dick ch. 104 (1851)

  51 Copy quote

  Show source