Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

Explore thoughtful writing quotes that highlight craft, voice, and the discipline behind great stories. From classic authors to contemporary creators, find concise wisdom on drafting, revising, and overcoming blocks. Whether you write fiction, poetry, essays, or scripts, these lines spark creativity and encourage steady practice. Use them to reflect on process, refine your style, or share motivation with fellow writers. A balanced mix of perspectives celebrates imagination, clarity, and perseverance across the broader landscape of arts, media, and entertainment.

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"You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies"

Richard Price, Writer

Richard Price

"I write for what's left of the eight-year-old still rattling around inside my head"

Chris Van Allsburg, Author

Chris Van Allsburg

"Following my muse has worked out pretty well so far. I can't see any reason to change the formula now"

Chris Van Allsburg, Author

Chris Van Allsburg

"At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind. Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself. I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration"

Chris Van Allsburg, Author

Chris Van Allsburg

"The opportunity to create a small world between two pieces of cardboard, where time exists yet stands still, where people talk and I tell them what to say, is exciting and rewarding"

Chris Van Allsburg, Author

Chris Van Allsburg

"Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity"

Gustave Flaubert, Novelist

Gustave Flaubert

"The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation"

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Writer

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people"

Thomas Mann, Writer

Thomas Mann

"Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow"

James Joyce, Novelist

James Joyce

"The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe"

Gustave Flaubert, Novelist

Gustave Flaubert

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead station"

William Gibson, Writer

"A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself"

Arthur Miller, Playwright

Arthur Miller

"A word after a word after a word is power"

Margaret Atwood, Novelist

Margaret Atwood

"People want to find out what happens to the characters, and want to keep reading and turning the pages"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader"

Robert Frost, Poet

Robert Frost

"Fiction has a unique role in conveying Truth. In fact, only fiction that is Truth with a capital T is worthwhile"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"Translation is at best an echo"

George Borrow, Author

"It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book"

Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche

"SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"I think all fiction should be fair game for the Christian market, except porn, of course"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"Actually 'Soon' has more than the Left Behind series, but I really believe less is more"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. Three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"Ironically, in today's marketplace successful nonfiction has to be unbelievable, while successful fiction must be believable"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones"

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Author

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft"

H.G. Wells, Author

H.G. Wells

"Literature is news that stays news"

Ezra Pound, Poet

Ezra Pound

"I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil"

Truman Capote, Novelist

Truman Capote

"Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality"

Edgar Allan Poe, Poet

Edgar Allan Poe

"I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir 'em up, but you can't do that on television. It's just not on"

Rupert Murdoch, Publisher

"Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures"

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"As for dialogue, I think it keeps things moving to cut to the chase"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"My dream remains to inform and entertain through fiction in the form of novels and movies that compete in the marketplace of ideas"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"In the prequel we're going to tell about the characters before Left Behind, and the book would end with the rapture instead of start with the rapture like the first one did"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"I put off writing the first Left Behind book for a year because I got invited to assist Billy Graham in his memoirs, and had we known what we were putting off for a year, we might not have put it off"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"Good fiction must be entertaining, but what makes fiction special - and true - is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"I love inventing worlds and characters and settings and scenarios"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"The theater of the mind is impossible to compete with, and I like the idea that with a few suggestions, each reader forms in his or her own mind what a character or a place looks like"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

Jerry B. Jenkins

"The original is unfaithful to the translation"

Jorge Luis Borges, Poet

Jorge Luis Borges

"That isn't writing at all, it's typing"

Truman Capote, Novelist

Truman Capote

"Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary"

Jessamyn West, Author

Jessamyn West

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