Inspiring Writing Quotes

I like literature that you respond to in some way. You laugh, you cry, you turn the light on - that's great, it's eliciting a response by proxy.

I have read books that are so cliched and lazy, my eyes have bled. But I also have read books marketed under the chick-lit umbrella that are so honest, clever and gritty that I've wanted to give up writing and paint walls instead.

A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. ... A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy: true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.

For heaven's sake, don't write writing. Write reading!

One of the great pleasures of reading Tom Wolfe - of still reading Tom Wolfe - is the sense of awe he consistently inspires.

I just think when you read something that's magnetic that pulls you into it or resonates with you, whatever that may be, that's always a positive thing.

Oh yeah; I love when I'm writing something that makes me cry - that's so cool. If it got me to do that, it's going to get someone else to do that.

I have met women who said, 'I started reading you when I sat in the chemo chair, and it made me feel better.' That is as humbling as it gets, to know that you, in some way, made the worst day of their life a little bit better.

The only power that exists is inside ourselves.

The poet's first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to bore himself-which, of course, means to write only when he has something urgent to say.

I think that you don't really want to write a book that doesn't really move people and doesn't get them to think.

When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.