16 Writing Quotes By Authors That'll Spark Your Inner Literary Genius

"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power." — Toni Morrison

"If you don't see the book you want on the shelf, write it." —Beverly Clearly

"If you fall in love with the vision and not your words, the rewriting will become easier." —Nora DeLoach

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear." —Joan Didion

"Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Make some light." —Kate DiCamillo

"[Write] knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them." —Edwina Danticat

"I know nothing in the world that has much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and look at it, until it shines." —Emily Dickinson

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started." —Agatha Christie

"To write something you have to risk making a fool of yourself." —Anne Rice

"If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word." —Margaret Atwood

"The first draft is a skeleton. Just bare bones. The rest of the story comes later with revising." —Judy Blume

"Writing is a process, a journey into the memory and the soul." —Isabel Allendale

"I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be stilled." —Sylvia Plath

"You may not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page." —Jodi Picoult

"I have always been fascinated by stories and language, and because I love thinking about what makes people tick." — Lois Lowry

"The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer." —Zadie Smith