Sometimes when I am lacking motivation or looking for a bit of inspiration I find myself looking up author quotes or author interviews. Often it’s the simplest words that contain the most complex truths.

Here are some of my favorite writing quotes from writers:

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

—Stephen King

“Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.”

—Hunter S. Thompson

“A word after a word after a word is power.”

—Margaret Atwood

“The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.”

—Robert Benchley

“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

—Samuel Johnson

“Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.”

—Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.”

—Larry L. King, WD

“There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.”

—Doris Lessing

“A writer is a world trapped in a person.”

—Victor Hugo

“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.”

―Ernest Hemingway

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”

―John Steinbeck

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”

—Isaac Asimov

“You can make anything by writing.”

—C.S. Lewis

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”

—Benjamin Franklin

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”

—Frank Herbert

What are your favorite quotes? Let me know if any of these resonated with you!