25 Quotes to Inspire Writers

Writing is difficult.

Some days we face disappointment, rejection, criticism, frustration, nasty reviews, or writer’s block. On the tough days, we need encouragement to keep going.

Here are 25 quotes on writing, creativity, and calling that can inspire you to keep going, even on the tough days.

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

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

Ernest Hemingway

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Maya Angelou

The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.

Neil Gaiman

Each of us has a unique part to play in the healing of the world.  

Marianne Williamson

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.

Sue Monk Kidd

I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it until it begins to shine.

Emily Dickinson

We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.  

Donald Miller

Behind every specific call, whether it is to teach or preach or write or encourage or comfort, there is a deeper call that gives shape to the first: the call to give ourselves away — the call to die.

Michael Card

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

William Wordsworth

You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

Junot Diaz

Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.

Neil Gaiman

Stories create community, enable us to see through the eyes of other people, and open us to the claims of others.

Peter Forbes

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.

Steven Pressfield

Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

Scott Adams

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

Diane Setterfield

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

Ben Okri

I think… the most brilliant thing about being a writer is that if you don’t like the way the world is, you can create your own.

Maegan Cook

The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.

Junot Diaz 

If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.

Dan Poynter

Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.

Annie Dillard

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.

Joss Whedon

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. … I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.

Gore Vidal

One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.

Lawrence Block

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it.  That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

Stephen King

Award-winning writer Lisa E. Betz believes that everyone has a unique story to tell the world. She loves inspiring fellow writers to be more intentional about their craft and courageous in sharing their words. Lisa shares her words through speaking, leading Bible studies, writing historical mysteries, and blogging about living intentionally.

You can find her on Facebook  LisaEBetzWriter Twitter @LisaEBetz and Pinterest Lisa E Betz.