Are you stuck in a rut? Need some motivation and inspiration? Maybe this a great list of quotations from notable writers, artists, filmmakers, and others can help. This list comes from the good people at MoonLit Getaway literary magazine. Here are five of my favorites from that list (although I could have listed many more).
Don’t risk missing 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. Give this list a read.
1. “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
— John Steinbeck
I can relate to this one. Sometimes when I take a break after being engrossed in writing, I’ll come up with more ideas for future writing projects.
2. “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
— E.L. Doctorow
I first encountered this quotation while reading Anne Lamott’s classic book about writing, Bird By Bird, and it offered me consolation about how my writing goes. Sometimes it feels more like driving through a blizzard with no headlights, but the idea is the same, I think.
3. “Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
— David Foster Wallace
I shared this quotation on Facebook, and one of my friends, a good Lutheran, kindly pointed out that this quote is borrowed (or ripped off) from Martin Luther’s statement about the purposes of the Old Testament law and the New Testament gospel: “Gospel comforts the disturbed while Law disturbs the comfortable.”
While the quote “Good artists copy; great artists steal” (attributed to Pablo Picasso, T.S. Eliot, Steve Jobs, and others) is not included in the MoonLit Getaway list, it seems appropriate to describe DFW’s appropriation of Luther’s statement.
4. “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”
— Jodi Picoult
That story isn’t going to write itself. Get the words down and worry about revising and editing later.
5. “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
— Mark Twain
This has been a favorite for a long time. I’m glad it found its way into this list.
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What about you? What favorites from this list resonate? Feel free to share below, or post a favorite quotation that is not in this list?
Image via sportskeeda. Quotation backstory.
Andy writes! 
they all are inspiring, Andrew …and i like best how Jodi Picoult says it …
thanks for sharing…🤍
Yes, the Jodi Picoult quote gets to the heart of it!
Thanks for another inspiring Friday Five. I often think of something attributed to William Faulkner about the importance of “sublimating the actual into the apocryphal” (when it comes to writing fiction). I think this is the actual quote:
“. . . I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it, and by sublimating the actual into the apocryphal I would have complete liberty to use whatever talent I might have to its absolute top.”
That’s a great one. Thanks for sharing!