Sometimes wry, sometimes sweeping, I find all of these quotes to be inspirational to struggling writers.

"Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own."

-Carol Burnett

"Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it."

-David Sedaris

"A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness."

-Edith Wharton

One of my personal favorites: "Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours."

-Ayn Rand

"Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals."

-Don Delillo

"Writing eases my suffering... writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence."

-Gao Xingjian

"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public."

-Winston Churchill

"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

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."

-E.L. Doctorow

"Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you -- as if you haven't been told a million times already -- that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching."

-Harlan Ellison

"Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world."

-Tom Clancy

"I write for the same reason I breathe--because if I didn't, I would die."

-Isaac Asimov

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip."

-Elmore Leonard

"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."

-C.S. Lewis

"I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties."

-Agatha Christie

"The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the word instead of being pulled by them."

-Raymond Chandler (so true for me!)

I love quotes, and amassing this list has been no exception--I tried to keep this short so people would read all of them, but I think I'll be publishing a companion soon--let me know if you like them as much as I do!

And as always, check out the BLOOOOGGG.