in Quotations

Quotes for Writers from Seven Steps on the Writer’s Path

The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never scoring. – Bill Copeland

It takes five years to break in and fifteen years to support yourself as a writer. – Sue Grafton

With the power of conviction there is no sacrifice. – Pat Benatar

I wrote for twelve years and collected 250 rejection slips before getting any fiction published, so I guess outside reinforcement isn’t all that important to me. – Lisa Alther

"Now" is the operative word. Everything you’ve put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream. – Barbara Sher

It’s never too late to be what you might have been. – George Eliot

The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It’s doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile. I think of my strawberry souffle. I did that at least twenty-eight times before I finally conquered it. – Julia Child

I’ve arrived at this outermost edge of my life by my own actions. Where I am is thoroughly unacceptable. Therefore, I must stop doing what I’ve been doing. – Alice Koller

What you don’t do can be a destructive force. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. – Anonymous

There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, "Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course, I’ve got dreams." Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look at it, and yep, they’re still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, "How good or how bad am I?" That’s where courage comes in. – Erma Bombeck

There is a need to find and sing our own song, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary voyage. – Barbara Lazear Ascher

If you have a dream of writing, that’s wishful thinking. If you have a commitment to writing, that’s the way to make your dreams come true. – Nancy Pickard

What had seemed easy in imagination was rather hard in reality. – L. M. Montgomery

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see everyday, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform. – Theodore H. White

Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid it will never begin. – Grace Hansen

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness. – Pearl S. Buck

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. – Henry David Thoreau

Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other. – Mary Caroline Richards

I had not thought of myself as geography, as invisible, integral lines I could chart, but the more I searched, the more things connected, until the rivers and the memories became a story, and also, perhaps a map. – Paul Zalis

Traveling is like falling in love: the world is made new. – Jan Myrdal

Life is a great big canvas and you should throw all the paint on it you can. – Danny Kaye

If you want, all that happens is that you get older. – Larry McMurtry

The work will teach you how to do it. – Estonian proverb

The defense force inside of us wants us to be cautious, to stay away from anything as intense as a new kind of action. It’s job is to protect us, and it categorically avoids anything resembling danger. But it’s often wrong. – Barbara Sher

Fear is the dark room in which negatives are developed. – Anonymous

Pioneers may be picturesque figures but they are often rather lonely ones. – Nancy Astor

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. – Agatha Christie

Everything looks impossible for the people who never try anything. – Jean-Louis Etienne

Everyone has talents what is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads. – Erica Jong

The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually to be fearing you will make one. – Elbert Hubbard

Argue for your limitations and sure enough they’re yours. – Richard Bach

If you ask me what I have come to do in the world, I who am an artist, I will reply: "I am here to live aloud". – Emile Zola

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity. – Oprah

It’s so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want to. – Sondra Anice Barnes

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong. – Ella Fitzgerald

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time. – Anna Freud

We’re frightened by what makes us different. – Anne Rice

I want to do it because I want to do it. – Amelia Earhart

I don’t know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them. – Don DeLillo

It’s all right to have butterflies in your stomach, just get them to fly in formation. – Dr. Rob Gilbert

One of the quickest ways to become exhausted is by suppressing your feelings. – Sue Patton Thoele

Discipline is remembering what you want. – David Campbell

Establishing goals is all right if you don’t let them deprive you of interesting detours. – Doug Larson

Goals are dreams with deadlines. – Diana Scharf Hunt

What great thing would you attempt if you knew it could not fail? – Robert H. Schuller

More to follow. I started reading the book and found it interesting with some good tidbits. But, I’m not in the right frame of mind right now and, the book is due back at the library anyway.