The Power of the Pen | 10 Quotes to Inspire Your Writing Journey

Writing is a powerful tool.

How often do you dismiss your voice? Do you tell yourself you don’t need to write [the important thing to you]? Has someone tried convincing you of a different reality than you have experienced?

Writing is an art. It can always be revisited and improved. The first part is getting it down in writing. Writing allows you to honor yourself, your experiences, and your story.

Below are ten quotes that have inspired me to be honest with myself on my writing journey:

1. the thing you are most

afraid to write.

write that.

— advice to young writers by Nayyirah Waheed

2. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

— Maya Angelou

3. When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.

— James Baldwin

4. You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people

wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.

— Anne Lamott

5. You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.

— Octavia E. Butler

6. when creating. be kind to your doubt. hear it out. thank it for its concern. and reassure it that you are an artist. and risk is essential.

— Nayyirah Waheed

7. Write it down on real paper with a real pencil. And watch shit get real.

— Erykah Badu

8. Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself. Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow.

— Octavia E. Butler

9. Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter.

— African Proverb

10. I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act.

— Janet Mock

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