Home   >   Writing for a Living   >   Quotes From Successful Authors To Keep You Motivated

Quotes From Successful Authors To Keep You Motivated

By on May 12, 2020

Quotes from successful authors who have been there and done that can be just what you need to give your confidence a boost. Read out to discover some witty, smart quotes from successful authors that are perfect for those days where you need some more motivation.

Quotes from successful authors to inspire you!

Motivational quotes

“Show up, show up, show up, and after a while, the muse shows up too.” 

- ISABEL ALLENDE

“This is how you do it: You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy and that hard.” - NEIL GAIMAN

“Protect the time and space in which you write, keep everybody away from it. Even the people who are most important to you.’ -ZADIE SMITH

In the planning stage of a book, don’t plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.”-ROSE REMAIN

Wise quotes

Always carry a notebook, and I mean always. The short term memory only retains information for three minutes. Unless it is committed to paper you can lose and idea forever.” - WILL SELF

“Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing. - Henry Miller

“Never use a long word where a short one will do.” - GEORGE ORWELL

"A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it” - EDGAR ALLEN POE

"Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed" - RAY BRADBURY 

Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action. Start as close to the end as possible. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of." -KURT VONNEGUT

 “The historian records, but the novelist creates.”E. M. FORSTER

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.

Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.” -WILLIAM FAULKNER

Inspiring quotes

“You have to get to a very quiet place inside yourself. And that doesn't mean that you can't have noise outside. I know some people who put jazz on, loudly, to write. I think each writer has her or his secret path to the muse. I'm told one writer stands for six hours with a typewriter on a podium—he stands and types. And I know a woman who has her computer in a closet and she goes in, closes the door, and, with her back to the door and her face to the wall, she writes” -MAYA ANGELOU

“The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.”  - LES BROWN

“ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to Say” -MICHAEL MOORCOCK

These writers all found great success in their fields, so are well worth listening to. Absorb their advice, take note of their wisdom, and do everything you can to follow in their footsteps. Good luck!

So now you've read all these amazing quotes from successful authors, why not find out more about how to stay motivated?

Get A Free Writer's Toolkit By Visiting https://www.writerslife.org/gid

bethany cadman
Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

About Ty Cohen