10 Great Writing Quotes to Start the New Year

I love quotes. I find them inspirational, challenging and a great way to jumpstart the new year.

Here are a few that recently got my attention:

1. "The devil hates goose quills, and, doubtless, he has good reason, for ready writers, by the Holy Spirit’s blessing, have done his kingdom much damage.” ~Martin Luther

2.  "What an astonishing thing a book is. It is a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts, on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person. [...] Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. Books are proof that humans are capable of working magic."  Carl Sagan

3.  “Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.”  Anne Lamott

 4.  "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live." Henry David Thoreau

5.  “You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke." Arthur Polotnik

6.  “I don't know if the muse is going to show up or not on any given day, but by golly, I'm going to be at my desk from 8 to 12 every morning in case she does. - Flannery O'Connor

7.  “If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like old faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.” Ray Bradbury

8.  “A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”  Robert Frost

9.  “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Maya Angelou

10.  “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”  William Wordsworth


I’ll leave you with a writer’s blessing by Lisa Gardner:

A Writer’s Blessing

May you always remember the thrill of being swept away by a really good book.


May the words you’re typing on the page be as worthy as the words running through your mind.


May your deadline be behind you.


May a good story lie ahead of you.


And as we go forth,

May you always enjoy the journey to finding those two perfect words: The End.

Do you have a favorite writers quote to share with us?