"If you could get up the courage to begin,
you have the courage to succeed."
-- David Viscott

"the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself... alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the sweat and the agony."

--William Faulkner

"You don't have to be great to get started but you have to get started to be great."

--Les Brown

"Everything changes when you change."

--Jim Rohn

"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is

the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing."

--Theodore Roosevelt

"Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes." --Benjamin Franklin

"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."

--Linus Pauling

"It only takes one person to change your life - you."-- Ruth Casey

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
-- Albert Einstein

"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not."
-- George Bernard Shaw

"The future belongs to those who believe in their dreams."-- Eleanor Roosevelt

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is ultimately to be at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be."-- Abraham Maslow

"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail."--Confucius

"If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you." -- Natalie Goldberg

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. Now put foundations under them." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Vision isn't enough unless combined with venture. It's not enough to stare up the steps unless we also step up the stairs." -- Vance Havner

"I don't feel I'll live a long life. That's why I have to get what I can from every day." -- Elvis Presley

"Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away." -- Elvis Presley

"You only pass through this life once, you don't come back for an encore." -- Elvis Presley

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow – what a Ride!" —Peter Sage, Entrepreneur and Speaker

"Don't fear making a mistake; fear failing to learn and move forward."--Life coach Philip Humbert

"Opportunity dances with those who are already on the dance floor."-- H. Jackson Brown Jr.

"Authors who never give you something to disagree with never give you anything to think about."--Michael LaRocca

"John Updike has said that, on reading an unfavorable review of one of his novels, "My ears close up, my eyes go warm, my chest feels thin as an eggshell, my voice churns silently in my stomach." Ah, yes. All right, so it hurts. But it is not a death sentence. It does not say that you will never write a good novel as long as you live. As novelists -- observers or listeners – we of all people should trust our ability to grow and change."- Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

"There will never be another now ----
I'll make the most of today.
There will never be another me ----
I'll make the most of myself."

~Helen Keller

"To achieve great things requires that we become great
people."--Philip Humbert

"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is
the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"In order for your writing to sing, you have to stay true to who you are."--Barb Cooper

"A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God."--Sidney Sheldon

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."--Red Smith

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

"When my horse is running good, I don't stop to give him sugar. "--William Faulkner

"The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything. "--John Irving

"The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing."--Ken MacLeod

"We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to."--Somerset Maugham

"Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say."--Edgar A. Poe

"Writing is its own reward."--Henry Miller

"How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream."--Gaston Bachelard

"Writing is thinking on paper."--William Zinsser

"Be like a duck, my mother used to tell me. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath."--Michael Caine

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."--Albert Einstein

"If you start with a bang, you won't end with a whimper."--T. S. Eliot

"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof sh** detector."--Ernest Hemingway

"Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face."--Helen Keller

"The first chapter sells the book. The last chapter sells the next book."--Mickey Spillane

"Everething that doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story."--Tapani Bagge

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."--Jack London

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

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."--John Lennon

"We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world."--Helen Keller

"Writing is communication, not self-expression. Nobody in this world wants to read your diary except your mother."--Richard Peck

"Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences."--Anne McCaffrey

"The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He's entitled to be entertained, instructed, amused; maybe all three. If he quits in the middle, or puts the book down feeling his time has been wasted, you're in violation."--Larry Niven

"Listening to critics is like letting Muhammad Ali decide which astronaut goes to the moon."--Robert Duvall

"There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence."--Samuel Johnson

"This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address."--Barbara Kingsolver

"You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist."--Isaac Asimov

"You can't try to do things; you simply must do them."--Ray Bradbury

"He who stops being better stops being good."--Oliver Cromwell

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."--Kurt Vonnegut

"If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter."--Anonymous

"I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil."--Truman Capote

"The only way to learn to write is to write."--Peggy Teeters

"It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen. A novelist must have the intestinal fortitude to cut out even the most brilliant passage so long as it doesn't advance the story."--Frank Yerby

"Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it."--Truman Capote

"One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar."--Helen Keller

"The only one who doesn't make mistakes is the one who doesn't do anything."--V. I. Lenin

"Knowing what you need from people is important, but even more so is to know which people can and cannot offer it to you."--Julie Clark Robinson, from her book LIVE IN THE MOMENT 

"Love makes things alive."--Christine Louise Hohlbaum, in an article in her newsletter, POWERFUL FAMILIES, POWERFUL LIVES, http://diaryofamother.com/ 

"Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength." --Arnold Schwarzenegger

""Work harder on yourself than you do on your job."--Jim Rohn

"There is no mistaking the dismay on the face of a writer who has just heard that his brain child is a deformed idiot."--L. Sprague de Camp

"Writing is a fairly lonely business unless you invite people in to watch you do it, which is often distracting and then have to ask them to leave."--Marc Lawrence