I’m a sucker for quotes. I frequent The Quotations Page and have multiple quote books at home including a Quotationary. I even run a Tumblr blog called Inspiration4Good where I post quotes aimed at inspiring social changes, movers, and shakers. I’m obsessed, I know, but I love it. Quotes are little advice snacks, sustaining me when nothing else can provide a remedy or reassurance.

And so, I was inspired by my love of quotes to put together this post. Like quotes, I devour writing advice from the greats, as if by some miracle their motivating words will jump-start my creativity (which does happen from time to time). I frequently refer to advice offered in Poets and Writers, blogs on the net, or writer interviews during my brainstorming, writing, and revising stages, and especially when I’m stuck in a creative rut. Sometimes the advice serves as a helpful reminder while at other times it offers a new way of looking at writing and the creative process. Below, I’ve compiled a selection of my very favorite writing advice. May it inspire you and keep you going even during the toughest writerly moments.

“Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.” –Kurt Vonnegut

“As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound.” –Kurt Vonnegut

“Write what should not be forgotten.” –Isabel Allende

“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.” –Ernest Hemingway

“Don’t say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.” –C.S. Lewis

“Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when if feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.” –Stephen King

“Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.” –Zadie Smith

“You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.” –Susan Orlean

“Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised” –John Steinbeck

“I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.” –John Steinbeck

“You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.” –Margaret Atwood

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” – William Faulkner

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” – Elmore Leonard

“Use the right word, not its second cousin.” –Mark Twain

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” –Slyvia Plath

“The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can’t, you’re dead.” –Warren Adler

“Hot action, cool writing.” –Debra Gwartney (Interpretation: write simply, without exaggeration during emotional or heavy action scenes.)

“Memorists shouldn’t exaggerate the most gruesome aspects of their lives. A reader can’t enter the [exaggerated] experience. She can only gawk from afar. You have to normalize the incredible.” –Mary Karr

“If you can’t surprise yourself, you can’t surprise the reader.” –Patricia Clark

“Be daring, take on anything. Don’t labor over little cameo works in which every word is to be perfect. Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.” –Joyce Carol Oates

Think: “What can I write about that no one else in this room can write about?” –Sandra Cisneros

“Writer’s block doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to say. Writer’s block means that you’re afraid to say what you really have to say.” –Sandra Cisneros

“I write about my personal experiences whether I’ve had them or not. I send myself on the journey.” –Ron Carlson

“I want to live other lives. I’ve never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances.” —Anne Tyler