These 20 quotes about writing by writers will inspire you to get writing.

1. “All a writer needs is talent and ink.”―JK Rowling

2. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.”―Stephen King

3. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”―Maya Angelou

4. “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”―Margaret Atwood

5. “A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”―Mark Twain

6. “Write hard and clear about what hurts.”―Ernest Hemingway

7. “The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”―Anaïs Nin

8. “If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.”―Toni Morrison

9. “A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.”―Chuck Palahniuk

10. “Write freely and as rapidly as possible, and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.”―John Steinbeck

11. “When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.”―James Baldwin

12. “Write what should not be forgotten.”―Isabel Allende

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

14. “Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.”―Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

15. “The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.”―Agatha Christie

16. “No black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much’. Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much’… No woman has ever written enough.”―Bell Hooks

17. “You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.”―Nancy Kress

18. “I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.”―Anne Morrow Lindbergh

19. “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”―Ray Bradbury

20. “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

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