Inspirational quotes for writers

Stop thinking about writing as art.  Think of it as work.  If you’re an artist, whatever you do is going to be art.  If you’re not an artist, at least you can do a good day’s work.                                                                 
Paddy Chayefsky

The first draft of anything is shit.
Hemingway

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought  together.
Vangogh

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

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads.
Erica Jong

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.               
Joseph Joubert

Making it precise…  My own rules are very simple.  First, cut out all the wisdom; then cut out all the adjectives.
Somerset Maugham

An author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth without pity and destroy most of it.
Colette

Write from your heart; rewrite from your head.
Viki King

Every writer I know has trouble writing.
Joseph Heller

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.
Richard Bach

Our primary function is to create an emotion and our second job is to sustain that emotion. 
Alfred Hitchcock

If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.
Wilson Mizner

Great writers aren’t great first-drafters. They’re great rewriters.
Andrew Bennett

The scriptwriter lives the life of the safe passive gatherer but possesses the dangerous inner terrain of an active hunter.
Jack Feldstein

Writing a screenplay is like climbing a mountain. When
you’re climbing, all you can see is the rock in front of you and
the rock directly above you.You can’t see where you’ve come
from or where you’re going.
Syd Field

Don’t get it right, get it written.
Art Arthur

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what`s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
Kubrick

I have a process where I eliminate dialogue and replace it with actions that can speak the same truth, if possible.
Kim Ki-duk 

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining…researching …talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
E.L. Doctorow

Bad writers are bad because they stop too soon.
In fact, let’s take a step back. The only quality, I think,
that marks the writer as different from everyone else is
simply an unwillingness to quit. Others give up when they
learn writing is hard; the writer struggles on.
When I sit down in front of the blank page, it’s no easier
for me to fill it than anyone else. The non-writer looks at the
blank page and — quite sensibly — says, ‘forget it, I’m outta
here.’ But if they had to, they could put a few words down
there — just like I do.
Only the words wouldn’t be any good. So the non-writer
gets frustrated, gives up and leaves. Me, too, I get
frustrated… but I sit there, and work to make it better.
Anybody who’s willing to struggle, I think, can write.
The real work is to stick at it until you find the gold. To
get to that funny line. To do the hard work no one else
wants to do, but everyone wants to have done. To discover
the great character bit, the clever story turn. Until you have
it, you don’t have it. Until it’s there, it’s not there — and you
need to stick at it until it is there.
Terry Rossario

Though this be madness
There is method in it.
Shakespeare

…All the stories in the mail that came back in through a slit in the saw mill floor, with notes of rejection that would never call them stories, but always anecdotes, sketches, notes etc…
What I had to do was work. I didnt care particularly how it all came about. I didnt take my own life seriously anymore, any one else’s life,yes but not mine. They all wanted something that I didnt want and I would get it without wanting it, if I worked.
To work is the only thing. It was the only thing that always made you feel good and in the mean time it was my own damned life and I would lead it where and how I pleased..
Hemingway

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
Tom Clancy

Our doubts are traitors and makes us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
Shakespeare

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams

The essence of dramatic form is to let an idea come over people without it being plainly stated. When you say something directly, it is simply not as potent as it is when you allow people to discover it for themselves.
Stanley Kubrick

Within the first pages of a screenplay a reader can judge the relative skill of the writer simply by noting how he handles exposition.
Robert McKee

It wasn’t until about the fifth draft of ’sixth sense’ that I really
began to figure it out. It was then that I realized he’s dead. It took me five more drafts to execute it right.
M. Night Shyamalan

The writing begins when you’ve finished. Only then do you know what you’re trying to say.
Mark Twain

There can’t be art without risk. It’s like saying No Sex, and then expecting there to be children.
Francis Ford Coppola

I always wanted to be a filmmaker, but I kept it a secret until I did my first movie.
Ang Lee

You’re not going to stumble on that career making concept if you keep revising the same pet idea for five years.
Ted Rossario

If you have four ideas, all equally viable, I’d recommend writing the one that has the best ending. That’s the one you’ve thought through the most, and the one you’re least likely to abandon midway.
John August

The first draft is nothing more than a starting point, so be wrong as fast as you can.
Andrew Stanton

The myth about me is that I sold my first screenplay and it’s true. But I had also worked very hard as a fiction writer for ten years and that’s how I learned the craft of telling stories.
Akiva Goldman

Everyone who tells me they don’t have time to write, I just say, ‘One scene a night for three months, and you’ll have a movie—you can even use the weekends.’ It’s possible to be a writer if you want to be a writer, even without all the time in the world….After doing the dishes, instead of turning on the television or reading a book or going to the movies, write one scene. Whatever you do write one scene.
Bruce Joel Rubin

Do all good screenplays fit the paradigm? Yes. But that does not make them good screenplays, or good movies. The paradigm is a form, not a formula.
Syd Field

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
Oscar Wilde