1. First of all, don’t worry about the money. Love the process. You don’t know when it’s gonna happen. Louis C.K. started hitting in his 40s; he’d been doing it for 20 years. And don’t settle. I don’t want to ever hear, “It’s good enough.” Then it’s not good enough. Don’t ever underestimate your audience. They can tell when it isn’t true. Also: Ignore your competition. A Mafia guy in Vegas gave me this advice: “Run your own race, put on your blinders.” Don’t worry about how others are doing. Something better will come.” –  Joan Rivers

2.  In short, this has been my strategy, though I’m worse at ‘pruning’ than I should be. Consume widely, create with focus, and you’ll see that the novel connections and solutions will follow naturally. You will have the broad base of material and information that allows for new, interesting applications paired with the practiced skill of a technician in your execution. -Erich Campbell, Create with Focus

3. The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out. ―David Rakoff, Half Empty

4. Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.  -Franz Kafka

5. Inspiration is for amateurs–the rest of us just show up and get to work. – Chuck Close (painter)

6. Wipe away the magic and myth of creating and all that remains is work … No matter what you read, no matter what they claim, nearly all creators spend nearly all their time on the work of creation. There are few overnight successes and many up-all-night successes.” – Fast Company

7. It was not only to do a study that I came to be with you, it was to ask you: how must one live? And you replied: by working. And I well understand. I feel that to work is to live without dying. I am full of gratitude and joy. For since my earliest youth I have wanted nothing but that. –Rainer Maria Rilke to Auguste Rodin

8. There is no special trick about writing or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it. – Sherwood Anderson

9. You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings. It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. If it seems to you that I move in a world of certitudes, you, par contre, must benefit from the great privilege of youth, which is that you move in a world of mysteries. But both must be ruled by faith.  – Anais Nin

10. We’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? – Doctor Who

Tagged: 10 quotes on writing, 10 writing quotes, Anais Nin, Anais Nin quote, art, art and inspiration, art inspiration, art is work, create, creative inspiration, creativity, creativity quote, David Rakoff, David Rakoff quote, Doctor Who, Doctor Who art quote, Doctor Who quote, Doctor Who we're all stories in the end, Franz Kafka, Franz Kafka quote, inspiration, is art hard work, is writing hard work, Joan Rivers success quote, literary, quotes on creativity, Rainer Maria Rilke, RAiner Maria Rilke quote, Sherwood Anderson quote, Sherwood Anderson writing quote, stories, storytelling, success quote, where to find inspiration, writing inspiration, writing inspiration quotes, writing quotes