Writing is storytelling and all of us are authors, not just of words but of reality. You are the author of your life, so go out and live! Then never quit writing about it! — Ben Mikaelsen
Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living. — Harold Pinter
Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant. — Edna Ferber
We write from life and call it literature, and literature lives because we are in it. — F. Sionil José
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
You write your life story by the choices you make. — Helen Mirren
I love writing, it's the center of my life. If you don't love what you do, you'd better find something else to love. Otherwise, you don't have a reason for living. — Ray Bradbury
If your life were a book, and you were the author, how would you want your story to go? — Amy Purdy
writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind. — Alice Childress
I am the author of my life. Unfortunately, I am writing in pen and can’t erase my mistakes. — Bill Kaulitz
Life is like a library owned by the author.
In it are a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him. — Harry Emerson Fosdick
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. — Sylvia Plath
The world doesn't fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life. — Betsy Lerner
Short Writing Life Quotes
Live an interesting life. Meet people. Read a lot and widely, learn from the great writers — Michael Morpurgo
By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught. — Walt Whitman
When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about. — Elias Canetti
Poetry is life distilled. — Gwendolyn Brooks
A life worth living is a life worth recording. — Jim Rohn
I am an artist at living - my work of art is my life. — D.T. Suzuki
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. — John W. Gardner
I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. — Peter De Vries
Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life. — Lawrence Kasdan
Writing is a struggle against silence. — Carlos Fuentes
Top 10 Writing Life Quotes
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing. — Richard P. Feynman
Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it. — Matsuo Basho
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. — Victor Hugo
To gain your own voice you have to forget about having it heard. — Allen Ginsberg
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's books and write your own. — Albert Einstein
You only pass through this life once, you don't come back for an encore. — Elvis Presley
I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world. — Sadako Sasaki
I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous. — Keith Richards
You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script. — John Taylor Gatto
Writing Life Image Quotes
I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list. — Susan Sontag
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.
Writing Your Own Life Story Quotes
If you own this story you get to write the ending. — Brené Brown
People have been telling me I'm a failure and that I'm doing it all wrong for 20 years now. Never trust anybody when they tell you how your story goes. You know your story. You write your own story. — Kevin Smith
If you write a story based on a real person, you're trapped by the details of the real person and his life. It gets in the way of writing your own story. — Caroline B. Cooney
Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often.
Surely the whole point of writing your own life story is to be as honest as you possibly can, revealing everything about yourself that is most private and probably most interesting for that very reason. — Judith Krantz
Writing the story of your own life is a bit like drilling your own teeth. — Gloria Swanson
Writing Your Life Story Quotes
And the wind will whip your tousled hair, The sun, the rain, the sweet despair, Great tales of love and strife. And somewhere on your path to glory You will write your story of a life. — Harry Chapin
You can't write your life story and leave out one of the most important things that happened to you in your life. I think that that would be dishonest, and it would be something people would be very angry about. — Kris Jenner
It’s interesting that in the Bible, in the book of Ecclesiastes, the only practical advice given about living a meaningful life is to find a job you like, enjoy your marriage, and obey God. It’s as though God is saying, Write a good story, take somebody with you, and let me help. — Donald Miller
When writing the story of your life, don't let anyone else hold the pen
In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow. — Jessica Cutler
Even when I think of writing fiction, it's being kind of a liar, a storyteller, a weaver, and there's that sense of how much of this is your life. The story is a way you unravel your life from behind a mask. — Edwidge Danticat
I don't want you to write about what you know, because you don't know anything. I don't want to hear about your boyfriend or your grandma... I'm getting a little tired of 'my life story as fiction'. Please don't tell me about your little life - is there nothing larger? More important? — Toni Morrison
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
You have to live what you write, or you have to know it. There are exceptions, like story songs, where you just have to have your facts straight. But I think you don't have to live a hard life to be a good or interesting songwriter. — Justin Townes Earle
If you're going to have someone win because of their story, go write a screenplay about your life. — Miley Cyrus
It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn't write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life. — Hortense Calisher
Your life is truly your life… it belongs to you. It is your story to write with love. Day by day, line by line, write it well — Lance Wubbels
Writing My Life Story Quotes
I always tell my students, about the biggest baddest things in life you must try to write small and light, save the big writing for the unexpected tiny thing that always makes or breaks a story. — Pam Houston
When I write a story, I just wanna tell you what's in my head. It can come from real life and then turn into fantasy, stuff just rhyming. And write about what you know. I just like to tell stories that have not been told or [told] from my perspective. — Nas
If I were to write the story of my life, I would shock the world. — Caterina Sforza
When writing the story of your life. Don't let anyone else hold the pen.
I can't write my life story without Emmitt and Troy. They can't write their life stories without me. We're tied together forever. This is a day to remember for the rest of our lives. — Michael Irvin
Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life. — Ray Bradbury
I've been transformed by stories, and I think that storytelling is definitely sacred. I take it very seriously because my life has been changed, whether it was a movie, a play, a piece of writing, poetry, a painting. — Karla Souza
When writing the story of your life. Dont let anyone else hold the pen.
I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book. — Roald Dahl
Though The Kite Runner was my first completed novel, I had been writing on and off for most of my life, primarily short stories, and primarily for myself. — Khaled Hosseini
I used to think, 'How can I write my life story? I'm still living it. — Frank Serpico
I have had the unfortunate experience of having someone write an unauthorised biography of me. Half of it is lies and the other half is badly written. My feeling is that if I'm going to write my life story, I ought to have my life first. — Dawn French
Teaching Writing Quotes
Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic. — Eric Allin Cornell
I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight. — Venerable Bede
You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be. — Mario Vargas Llosa
Write this down: My life is full of unlimited possibilities.
It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words. — Anthony Doerr
James Franco, acting, teaching, directing, writing, producing, photography, soundtracks, editing - is there anything you can do? — Natasha Leggero
Teach your students real-world writing purposes, add a teacher who models his or her struggles with the writing process, throw in lots of real-world mentor texts for students to emulate, and give our kids the time necessary to enable them to stretch as writers. — Kelly Gallagher
With writing we have second chances.
It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest. — Barry Mann
Children do not learn in school; they are babysat. It takes maybe 50 hours to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that, students can teach themselves. Mainly what school does is to keep the children off the streets and out of the job market. — John Taylor Gatto
If you are not a writer, you will not understand the difficulties of writing. If you are not a writer, you will not know the fears and hopes of the writers you teach. — Mem Fox
Words are the most powerful thing in the universe... Words are containers. They contain faith, or fear, and they produce after their kind. — Charles Capps
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. — James A. Michener
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. — Aldous Huxley
Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes. — Cole Porter
I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired. — Lucille Clifton
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. — Jack Kerouac
I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise. — Richard Brautigan
When you write a song, most of the words you use are in black and white, and then, from time to time, you use one that’s in color. These words in color are a part of ourselves, because we give them a meaning. If you like, we give them a third dimension. — Jacques Brel
I can’t write five words but that I change seven. — Dorothy Parker
You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length. — Carl Friedrich Gauss
Being A Writer Quotes
I'm not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that's more what entertainment and music should be. — Chris Cornell
I am dumbfounded that there hasn't been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet. — Walter Cronkite
You may not be good at hand-to-hand sales, but you may be a really good writer. — Naval Ravikant
The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that’s on a good day. — Robert De Niro
If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow. — Louis L'Amour
Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive. — Marya Mannes
Do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover? With kids, your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings. — Stevie Nicks
When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better. — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I'll go a step further. You must be bisexual. — Rita Mae Brown
It's funny, in a way the actor is a writer. It's not like the two things are so separate as to be like apples and oranges. The writer and the actor are one. — Sam Shepard
Writing Well Quotes
We need to have music that contributes to the well-being of the spirit. Music that cradles people's lives and makes things a little easier. That's what I try to do, and what I want to do. You don't want to close the door on hope. — Merle Haggard
If someone writes a great story, people praise the author, not the pen. People don't say, 'Oh what an incredible pen...where can I get a pen like this so I can write great stories?' Well, I am just a pen in the hands of the Lord. He is the author. All praise should go to him. — Keith Green
To write well and speak well is mere vanity if one does not live well. — Bridget of Sweden
There are a couple of carp fishing books I've been reading. I'm very interested in that line of books, because I think they write very well, carp anglers, about the general environment. — Tom Felton
Before you go to bed, write down three 'gratefuls' for the day and three 'did wells' (they can even include something as simple as doing the laundry)-the results can be amazing! — Carol Burnett
Silk Road to Ruin has all the analysis and it's structured very well. I rely on my notes more and I use direct quotes. But there's nothing like writing about it right away. — Ted Rall
Without dignity our lives are only blinks of duration. But if we manage to lead a good life well, we create something more. We write a subscript to our mortality. We make our lives tiny diamonds in the cosmic sands. — Ronald Dworkin
Well, I always say that the two things I was most disastrous at in my life, being a teenager and being a wife, were the two things I really wound up cashing in on when I was writing fluffy magazine pieces. — Ann Patchett
I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable. — Martin Amis
Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, 'Collecting material'. No one can object to that. — Stella Gibbons
Africa’s story has been written by others; we need to own our problems and solutions and write our story. — Paul Kagame
All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. — Leo Tolstoy
You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born. — Anne Lamott
It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power. — Raymond Carver
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. — Ursula K. Le Guin
I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks. — Maeve Binchy
First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice. — Octavia Butler
There's a story everywhere. Being bored to death someplace is basically a funny proposition. What you have to watch out for is you don't write a boring story about a boring place. — Tim Cahill
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. — Edgar Allan Poe
Writing Every Day Quotes
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white. — Irving Berlin
I don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular. — David Ogilvy
Writing about 2,000 words in three hours every morning, 'Casino Royale' dutifully produced itself. I wrote nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before I might have despaired. — Ian Fleming
Write. Write every day. Write honestly. Write something that doesn’t exist, and you wish did. Read. Learn. Study. Watch people. Listen to what they say, listen to how they say it and listen to what they do not say. Surprise yourself. Scare yourself. — Brian Michael Bendis
You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world. — Ray Bradbury
Ultimately one has to pity these poor souls who know every secret about writing, directing, designing, producing, and acting but are stuck in those miserable day jobs writing reviews. Will somebody help them, please? — David Ives
Writing is not a genteel profession. It's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty. — Rosemary Mahoney
Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up. — Jane Yolen
You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page. — Jodi Picoult
I shall not be deterred by people who don't see where the future of Africa lies. It is the short-sighted people who put their opinions in writing. They don't understand that the future of all countries lies in processing. — Yoweri Museveni
The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature. — Paul De Man
Composing is a natural fit. As far as the creative process goes, I'd rather do this than anything else, by far. Something different happened to me when I started to write music to images. It was a feeling of excitement and connection and a sense of being in the right place that I never had before. — James Newton Howard
Writing, for me, means humility. It’s a process that involves fear and doubt, especially if you’re writing honestly. — Kiran Desai
And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it. — Jason Bateman
You need to know a little about a lot to write a book. The amount of research that goes into it- it's just not the ideas that come out of your head. You need to have specifics and 80,000 words. — James Murray
As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery. — Robert Hayden
My feeling is that poetry is also a healing process, and then when a person tries to write poetry with depth or beauty, he will find himself guided along paths which will heal him, and this is more important, actually, than any of the poetry he writes. — Robert Bly
Lyric writing is an interesting process in Sonic Youth. There's three people writing now, and we've all had a lot of interest and involvement with expression through words — Thurston Moore
Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. ... It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus. — Enid Bagnold
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. — Neil Gaiman
If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. — Michel Foucault
When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete. — Prince
I do not write for this generation. I am writing for other ages. If this could read me, they would burn my books, the work of my whole life. On the other hand, the generation which interprets these writings will be an educated generation; they will understand me and say: Not all were asleep in the nighttime of our grandparents. — Jose Rizal
I write ... in order to help ensure that the teeming millions in the New World, for whose sins Christ gave His life, do not continue to die in ignorance, but rather are brought to knowledge of God and thereby saved. — Bartolome de las Casas
I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger. — Simone de Beauvoir
I think that every decision I make in my life is based off of an emotion - and it definitely hurts me in some situations, and helps in some situations, like obviously writing and stuff is my favourite thing to do because I get to use all of my emotions and express them in that way. — Melanie Martinez
She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste. — Julio Cortazar
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art. — Helena Bonham Carter
In real life, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game. — Anita Brookner
Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. — Mario Vargas Llosa
I didn't reach my athletic peak until I was 43. I didn't write my first book until I was 44. I didn't start my podcast until I was 45. At 30, I thought my life was over. At 52 I know it's just beginning. Keep running. Never give up. And watch your kite soar. — Rich Roll
Sometimes fear grips me that these fragile moments of life will fade away. It seems that I write against erasure. — Assia Djebar
Learning to read and write changes lives; it means jobs, money, health, and dreams fulfilled. — Queen Rania of Jordan
I write the lyrics based on what is going on in my life - I'm not going to write about the old hair metal stuff, like castles and stuff. — Oliver Sykes
Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it. — Lloyd Alexander
In the book of life every page has two sides: we human beings fill the upper side with our plans, hopes and wishes, but providence writes on the other side, and what it ordains is seldom our goal. — Nisami
A poem is never finished, only abandoned. — Paul Valery
Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period. — Nicholas Sparks
You may find many contradictory statements and philosophies within my writings. However, to this I will say such is life, for life is full of contradictions. — Bryant H. McGill
Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. We've done just what we set out to do. Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers and you. — Jim Henson
A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous. — Amin Maalouf
There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it. — Shannon Alder
Your emotional life is not written in cement during childhood. You write each chapter as you go along. — Harry Stack Sullivan
In Conclusion
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