15 Motivational Quotes for Authors

What is it about motivational quotes that inspire us to greater endeavors? Daring us, energizing us, prodding us to overcome our fears and anxiety, so we can do what we truly desire?

Maybe it’s the quick, easy-to-remember word bites, or perhaps simply the comfort of knowing we are not the first trodding this territory. Regardless, the human spirit responds to simple quotes with powerful impact.

As writers, quotes from successful authors can move us past blocks, help us overcome anxiety, and keep us from giving up in the face of rejection. Maybe you could use a quick boost of daring, energy, or prodding today.

If so, here are fifteen of my favorite motivators:

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” — Joan Didion

“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” — Lord Byron

“It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over.” — Stephen King

“Writing is the supreme solace.” — William Somerset Maugham

“If you’re a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he’s good, the older he gets, the better he writes.” — Mickey Spillane

“A wounded deer leaps the highest.” — Emily Dickinson

“Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I’m writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.” — Anne Rice

“You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.” — Ray Bradbury

“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” — Henry David Thoreau

“My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.” — Anton Chekhov

“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.” — William Faulkner

“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.” — Gustave Flaubert

“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.” — Sidney Sheldon

Which of these inspires you most?