Author Jodi Lea Stewarts’s

Top 20 Favorite Quotes to Inspire Writers

The one I most live by because it could have been written by me is this one by Roald Dahl. For years, I have said that great writing is actually rewriting.

“By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least one hundred and fifty times. I am suspicious of both facility and speed. Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this.”

~ Roald Dahl

“A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”

~ Mark Twain

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.”

~ Benjamin Franklin

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”

~ Richard Bach

“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”

~Mark Twain

“I am easily satisfied with the very best.”

~Winston Churchill

“Style is not how you write. It is how you do not write like anyone else.”

~ Charles Ghinga

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

~G.K. Chesterton

 “I want to do something splendid, something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I am dead – I think I shall write books.”

~ Louisa May Alcott

“It’s not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.”

~ T.S. Eliot

 “My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don’t have interesting characters and a good story to tell.”

~ Harold Ramis

“Unless you write yourself, you can’t know how wonderful it is; I always used to bemoan the fact that I couldn’t draw, but now I’m overjoyed that at least I can write. And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself.

~ Anne Frank

“The one common thread in all of the books that are falling apart on my shelf? Characters—flawed ones with desires and needs who spend most of the story tripping over their weaknesses in an effort to get what they want.”

~ Becca Puglisi 

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.

~ Albert Einstein

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

~ Anton Chekhov 

“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

“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.”

~ H.G. Wells 

“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”

~ Shannon Hale

“Decide what you want to do, then do it.”

~ Claudeen Arthur, FormerNavajo Nation Attorney General

 I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear; my courage is reborn.

~ Anne Frank

 And a bonus quote from the author!

“By writing I can get to know the characters who prance and dance through my mind. Hopefully, I will create a mountain town, a creek, a house, a nation, a cause for them to inhabit, thus allowing them to get on with their fictional real lives. It’s like coloring a page in a coloring book… as soon as you finish it, the page is alive.”

~ Jodi Lea Stewart