Inside: Famous Author Quotes to Inspire, Delight, and Make You Say “So True!”
If there’s one thing authors are really good at (besides writing bestsellers and breaking our hearts in the final chapter), it’s dropping little gems of wisdom that stick with us long after the book ends. Whether you’re a book lover, a quote collector, or just here for some feel-good brain fuel, this list of famous author quotes is here to make your day a whole lot more inspiring.
From timeless classics to modern voices, these 70 quotes remind us why words matter—and how the right ones, strung together, can feel like magic.
70 Famous Author Quotes to Inspire, Delight, and Make You Say “So True!”
1. “We are all fools in love.” — Jane Austen
2. “You can make anything by writing.” — C.S. Lewis
3. “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” — Ernest Hemingway
4. “A word after a word after a word is power.” — Margaret Atwood
5. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” — Harper Lee
6. “If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” — J.K. Rowling
7. “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” — Stephen King
8. “The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.” — John Green
9. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” — Oscar Wilde
10. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” — Emily Brontë
11. “Not all those who wander are lost.” — J.R.R. Tolkien
12. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
13. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” — Maya Angelou
14. “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” — Mark Twain
15. “I write to discover what I know.” — Flannery O’Connor
16. “Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.” — Jim Rohn
17. “Write hard and clear about what hurts.” — Ernest Hemingway
18. “She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” — J.D. Salinger
19. “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” — Neil Gaiman
20. “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.” — Ernest Hemingway
21. “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” — Sylvia Plath
22. “There’s always room for a story that can transport people to another place.” — J.K. Rowling
23. “If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” — Martin Luther
24. “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” — Ernest Hemingway
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More Words of Wisdom
25. “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” — Anton Chekhov
26. “You have to write the book that wants to be written.” — Madeleine L’Engle
27. “One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” — Cassandra Clare
28. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” — Stephen King
29. “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” — Oscar Wilde
30. “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” — Anaïs Nin
31. “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic.” — J.K. Rowling
32. “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” — William Wordsworth
33. “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” — Louisa May Alcott
34. “We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already.” — J.K. Rowling
35. “Only in the darkness can you see the stars.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
36. “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” — Philip Pullman
37. “To learn to read is to light a fire.” — Victor Hugo
38. “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” — Douglas Adams
39. “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” — Cicero
40. “A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” — Graham Greene
41. “Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.” — Carlos Ruiz Zafón
42. “To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.” — Anne Rice
43. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” — Maya Angelou
44. “The past beats inside me like a second heart.” — John Banville
45. “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” — Joan Didion
Famous Author Quotes You Should Know
46. “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” — Stephen King
47. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” — Stephen King
48. “So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.” — Norton Juster
49. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” — George R.R. Martin
50. “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” — J.K. Rowling
51. “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” — Jack London
52.“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.” — Margaret Atwood
53. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” — Kurt Vonnegut
54. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” — Maya Angelou
55. “Not all those who wander are lost.” — J.R.R. Tolkien
56. “The world was hers for the reading.” — Betty Smith
57. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” — Haruki Murakami
58. “There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.” — Beatrix Potter
59. “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” — Albert Camus
60. “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” — William Wordsworth
61. “You have to write the book that wants to be written.” — Madeleine L’Engle
62. “A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit.” — John Milton
63. “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero
64. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” — Jane Austen
65. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
66. “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” — Louis L’Amour
67. “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” — Mark Twain
68. “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” — Mark Twain
69. “You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page.” — Annie Proulx
70. “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” — Ray Bradbury
Whether you’re chasing your own writing dreams or simply soaking up the wisdom of literary legends, these quotes are a reminder that words have the power to shape worlds—both real and imagined. Keep them close for when you need a little motivation, a spark of creativity, or just a comforting line that feels like a warm hug from your favorite book.
Feeling inspired yet? Whether you’re in the middle of a writing binge, just finished a great read, or simply love collecting meaningful quotes, I hope this roundup of famous author quotes added a little sparkle to your day. Bookmark it, share it with your fellow bookworms, or use it as a daily pep talk. Authors really do say it best, don’t they?