I recently laughed and felt motivated by these writing quotes.
As writers, there are inspiring funny quotes that will get you laughing.
Writers are inspiring as well as funny.
Not all though.
Some have a way of making fun of their craft.
Sometimes when I need a hard laugh, I read these quotes.
What I also love is that these quotes also offer positive advice to writers.
Let’s start laughing.
1.” Learn to write. Never mind the damn statistics. If you like statistics, become a CPA.”
– Jim Murray
2.”Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life.”
—-Ketrina Monroe.
3.”A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
—–Thomas Mann
4.”There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows it.” W.Somerset Maugham
5.”A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn’t allow it to spoil your lunch.”
– Kingsley Amis
6.”Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”– Mark Twain
7.” If writers were good businessmen, they’d have too much sense to be writers.”
– Irvin S. Cobb
8.”I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
– Douglas Adams
9.”A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down.”
– Edna St. Vincent Millay
10.”Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.”
– John Steinbeck
11.”It takes an awful lot of time to not write a book.”
– Douglas Adams
12. “I was sorry to hear my name mentioned as one of the great authors because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well myself.”
– Mark Twain
13.” As far as I’m concerned, “whom” is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.”
– Calvin Trillin
14.”autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.”
– Quentin Crisp
15.”I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.”
– Steven Wright
16.”Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.”
– Groucho Marx
17.”Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publications.”
– Fran Lebowitz
18.”Revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.”
– Stephen King
19.”If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now.”
Dorothy Parker
20.”The funny thing about writing is that when you are doing it well or doing it poorly,It looks the exact same that is actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing”
John Green
21.”Never let a bad memory get in the way of a good memoir.”
– Joanie Levenson
22.”Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
– Flannery O’Connor
23.”It’s splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop like chestnuts.”
– Gustave Flaubert
24.”Writing is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public.”
– Paulo Coelho
25.”There are two kinds of people who sit around all day thinking about killing people. Mystery writers and serial killers. I’m the kind that pays best.”
Richard Castle
26.”I can’t understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.”—Fred Allen
27.”All literature is gossip.”
– Truman Capote
28.”Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.”
– Dr. Samuel Johnson, to an aspiring writer
29.”Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.”
– Anonymous
30.“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
– Ernest Hemingway
31.”I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.”
– A. J. Liebling
32.”There’s not much to be said about the period except that most writers don’t reach it soon enough.”
– William Zinsser
33.”The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
– Thomas Jefferson
34.”It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.”
– Robert Benchley
35.”When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am a grown-up they call me a writer.”
– Isaac Bashevis Singer
36.”It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”
– Jack Kerouac, WD
37.”Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. Don’t use double negatives. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.”
– William Safire
38.” Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial “we.”
– Mark Twain
39.”Writing is like prostitution. First, you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.”
– Ashish Chauhan
40.”Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
– Mark Twain
41.”Did you hear about the little boy who ended a sentence with 5 prepositions? He said, “What are you bringing that book that I don’t want to be read to out of up for?”
42.”I hate the rhetoric of politicians, but I love it when writers lie to me. If the novelist ran for office. I would vote for their characters. ”
Benson Bruno
43.”Let me see if I can put it in words that even the inebriated might understand.”
– Tom Robbins
44.”This is how you do it: sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.”
– Neil Gaiman
45.”When Thoreau wrote: “Simplify, simplify, simplify!” shouldn’t he have edited it down to “Simplify!”?”
– CrankyPappy @CrankyPappy
46.”He does not so much split his infinitives as disembowel them.”
– Rebecca West
47.”If I fall asleep with a pen in my hand don’t remove it — I may b writing in my dreams.”–
Terri Guillemes
48.”I am a writer. If I seem cold, it’s because I am surrounded by drafts.”
– (Unknown Author)
49.”Writers don’t have lifestyles. They sit in little rooms and write.”
– Norman Mailer
50.”The only time I’ll get good reviews is if I kill myself.”
– Edward Albee
51.”I write funny. If I can make my wife laugh. I know I’m on the right track-But yes, I don’t like to get maudlin, And I have a tendency towards it “-
Gene Wilder
52.”It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.”
– C.J. Cherryh
53.”It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.”
Andrew Jackson
54.”A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one.”
– Baltasar Gracián
55.”I get a lot of letters from people. They say: “I want to be a writer. What should I do?” I tell them to stop writing to me and get on with it.”
– Ruth Rendell
56.”Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment thereafter.”
– Jessamyn West
57.” when people share a little light on their monster we find out how similar most of our monsters are”
Anne Lamott
58.”About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.”
– Josh Billings
59.”The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time… unlike, say, a brain surgeon.”
– Robert Cormier
60.”Writing is like prostitution. First, you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money’.’ – Ashish Chauhan
61″I am procrastinating by writing this
You are procrastinating by reading this
Now we are procrastinating together”
Yay Us
62.”Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.”
– Ernest Hemingway
63.”It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.”
– Robert Benchley
64.”An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.”
– Franklin P. Jones
65.”All autobiographies are alibi-ographies.”
– Clare Booth Luce
66.”Alimony is the curse of the writing class.”
– Norman Mailer
67.”I’m not a very good writer… but I’m an excellent rewriter.”
– James Michener
68.”How many writers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Six:
One to screw it in,
One to sharpen all the pencils in the house,
One to make more coffee,
One to call a friend to chat,
And one to complain that there’s never time to do any writing.
Wait, that’s only five — that’s why they need editors.”
-Anon
69.”The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”
– Mary Heaton Vorse
70.”Me in the early freelance years: stranger: Oh, you’re a writer! Have you written anything I may have read? Me: Depends. How well-read are you on the top ten tips for hiring a professional carpet cleaning service in Manchester?”
– Kelly Dunning
71.”Autobiography is an unrivaled vehicle for telling the truth about other people.”
– Philip Guedalla
72.”Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”
– Gene Fowler
73.”I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”
– Elmore Leonard
74.”The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”
– Tom Waits
75.”I wrote a few children\’s books. Not on purpose.”- Steven Wright
76.’Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.’ – Christopher Hampton
77.”Being an author is being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.”
– Terri Guillemets
78.”The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.”
– J. Frank Dobie
79.”Other than the physical act of putting pen to paper, I can’t think of another more important job duty of the writer than to stare wistfully out a window.”
– Terri Guillemets
80.”The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
– Stephen King
81.”If Moses were alive today he’d come down from the mountain with the Ten
Commandments and spend the next five years trying to get them published.”
– Anonymous
82.”No author dislikes to be edited a much as he dislikes not to be published.”
– Russell Lynes
83.”The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere.”
– S.J. Perelman
84.”Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.”
– Ernest Hemingway
85.”If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.”
– Kingsley Amis
Conclusion
Now it’s your turn.
Let me know your favorite funny writing quotes in the comments section.
If you know of any funny Writing quote.
Feel free to share with me in the comments section.