Welcome to our page of Inspirational Quotes: Thoughts and Sayings by those who understand the struggle to be creative on a regular basis.
“Solving other people’s writing problems is easier than solving your own.” – Nicholas Corder
“I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” ― Woody Allen
“The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.” ― Albert Einstein
“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” ― Charles M. Schulz
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” ― Oscar Wilde
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” ― Groucho Marx
“Reality continues to ruin my life.” ― Bill Watterson,
“Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.” ― Mark Twain
“What a slut time is. She screws everybody.” ― John Green,
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” ― Mark Twain
“I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.” Harper Lee
“Just write every day of your life. Read Intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.” Ray Bradbury
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Toni Morrison
“If my doctor told me I only had six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. “ Isaac Asimov.
“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it is done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” Neil Gaiman.
“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” Thomas Mann.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit. –Aristotle
Well begun is half done. –Greek Proverb
Every artist was first an amateur. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. –Amelia Earhart
Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. –Jamie Paolinetti
It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. –Confucius
Some GK Chesterton quotes:
1. And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
2. Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.
3. Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
4. Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
5. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
6. The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
7. The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
8. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
9. There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
10. There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
11. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.
12. The mere brute pleasure of reading is the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
13. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, “I’m possible!” – Audrey Hepburn
I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. – Benjamin Franklin
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. – Chinese Proverb
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. – Wayne Gretzky (Canadian Hockey Player)
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” ~ George Eliot
“I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil.” – Marilyn Monroe
People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day. A.A. Milne
A diamond is merely a lump of coal that did well under pressure. Unknown
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito. Dalai Lama
To sport would be as tedious as to work’
Shakespeare: King Henry IV – First Part as spoken by Prince Henry
From an interview Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Ballad of Peckham Rye etc) gave to Frank Kermode: “I think the best thing is to be conscious of everything one writes and let the unconscious take care of itself, if it exists,which we don’t know…The best thing is to know what you are doing I think.”
The following five quotes from Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” (Amazon link)
E.L.Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.””Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.””The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and you can shape it later.””Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can’t–and, in fact, you’re not supposed to–know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing.””If you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don’t ever bother finishing, that you lose interest or faith in them along the way, it may be that there is nothing in their center about which you care passionately.”
“Buy the Positively Productive Writer by Simon Whaley” – said Simon Whaley 😉 (Amazon link)
Gerald Brenan ( writer and Hispanist), about Henry Miller :.. “He’s not really a writer, but a non-stop talker to whom someone has given a typewriter….”
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce ( aka: “Bitter Bierce” ) the American critic: “ The covers of this book are too far apart….”
T.S.Eliot on Henry James ( the Literary Critic): “ He has a mind so fine, that no idea could violate it….”!
Lowell Thomas ( Biographer of T.E.Lawrence -‘Lawrence of Arabia’ ): “ He had a genius for backing into the Limelight….”
Professor Stuart Eriksson once said – prior to delivering a highly technical explanatory speech – “No need to ask me to be brief … I’ve kept it simple … I already know the obvious – that the brain absorbeth only whilst the seat endureth ….”!
Wrekin Writers 