Forty quotations for writing inspiration

Writers know inspiration and creative achievement are wondrous. It’s great to have a manuscript in hand and feel that it works, to experience a successful wordsmith’s elation like Emily Dickinson’s exclamation, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Yet, there is the deep insight that writing is a multifaceted process, a journey with pot holes as deep as an abyss and fast stretches as smooth as a runway. The craft of writing is a complex process, for as Isaac Singer indicates, “Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.” The challenge is for that expression, the achieved writing, to have the rich, meaningful ability to transport an audience, for as William Saroyan stated, “The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.” The hard work of writing needs the artistic fuel of continual inspiration.

Inspiration and renewal

Writing carries layers of meaning woven through creativity and the willingness to experiment. Its craft requires courage and the selfless guts to explore combined with deep patience with its challenges. When writers hit a writing block wall or simply have difficulty drawing from inner wells, the insights of other wordsmiths and artists can renew, inspire, and guide. These selected quotations are chosen to offer a little help from creative spirits, past and present.

Quotations

Following are quotations that reflect on the nature of writing. They are not placed in order of essential importance as that would be impossible.

“Give birth again/To the dream.” -- American poet and recipient of Presidential Medal of the Arts, Maya Angelou
“Writers . . . write to give reality to experience.” -- American poet and Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” -- American writer, Mark Twain
“Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men” – Chinese writer and philosopher, Confucius
“The image is a kind of emotional shorthand.” -- Feminist writer, Erica Jong
“The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.” -- French-Cuban author, Anais Nin
“When you write, you lay out a line of words.” -- Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Annie Dillard
“Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.” -- Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso
“This bridge will only take you halfway there – The last few steps you’ll have to take alone.” -- American poet, Shel Silverstein
“Go back so far there is another language/go back far enough the language/is no longer personal.” -- American poet, Adrienne Rich
“My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.” -- Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/dylan-thomas
“Not all those who wander are lost.” -- British author, J.R.R. Tolkien
“Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.” -- American author and talk show host, Larry L. King
“The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book.” -- American poet, Wallace Stevens
“We need to sit on the rim/of the well of darkness/and fish for fallen light/with patience.” -- Nobel prize-winning, Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda
“Easy reading is damned hard writing.” – American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint on the broken glass.” -- Russian author, Anton Chekhov
“Knowledge is Life with wings.” -- Lebanese poet, Kahlil Gibran
“You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.” – Mexican author, Carlos Fuentes
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” -- American artist and writer, Scott Adams
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” -- Italian Renaissance artist, Leonardo da Vinci
“The successful writer listens to himself.” – American author, Frank Herbert
“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.” -- British author, Virginia Woolf
“Something looks back from the trees,/and knows me for who I am.” -- American poet, Jane Hirshfield
“I was hurrying through my own soul . . . I was leaning out . . . I was listening.” -- American poet, Mary Oliver
“Writers live twice.” -- American author, Natalie Goldberg
“It had something to do with love.” -- Chinese American poet, Li Young Lee
“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.” -- American poet, Allen Ginsberg
“I think of character and dialogue, and extend it to design.” -- American British poet, T.S. Eliot
“All God’s angels come to us disguised.” -- American poet, James Russell Lowell
“Writing books is the closest men every come to childbearing.” – American, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Norman Mailer
“I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.” -- Nobel Prize-winning, American author, Ernest Hemingway
“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.” -- American author, Truman Capote
“The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.” -- American author, Philip Roth
“What is now proved was once only imagined.” -- British poet, William Blake
“A desire to write grows with writing.” – Dutch scholar, Desiderius Erasmus
“Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.” -- American author, Jack London
“I believe in anything that works.” -- Armenian American author, William Saroyan
“Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’” – Jedi Yoda, from Star Wars created by George Lucas
“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” -- American musician, Duke Ellington

A meaningful journey

The value of writing and words is immeasurable. William Stafford stated, “Writing is one of the great, free human activities. There is scope for individuality, and elation, and discovery.” For many writers, the work, the creative process, and the experience of reflection and experience defines an essential element, for as Toni Morrison described – “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” The living road of words, experience, and achievement, the wondrous and challenging journey, says it all.

Find the take in this article to be helpful? National and Local Education as well as National and International Travel materials come from a husband and wife creative team, who travel extensively as photonaturalists and writers. One is an experienced scientist with a doctorate in Material Sciences and background in pharmaceutical and optics research. The other is former Vice President of GKE (Global Knowledge Exchange), who served as a US Web-based Education Commissioner during the Clinton administration, and was a former US National Tech&Learning Teacher of the Year. To keep current on similar articles, view the suggested links below and click the free, subscribe link at the top of this article.