quotes in writing an essay

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How to Put a Quote in an Essay

Last Updated: November 28, 2022 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD and by wikiHow staff writer, Danielle Blinka, MA, MPA . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 2,639,726 times.

Using a direct quote in your essay is a great way to support your ideas with concrete evidence, which you need to support your thesis. To select a good quote , look for a passage that supports your argument and is open to analysis. Then, incorporate that quote into your essay, and make sure you properly cite it based on the style guide you’re using.

Sample Quotes

Incorporating a Short Quote

• For instance, let's say this is the quote you want to use: "The brown leaves symbolize the death of their relationship, while the green buds suggest new opportunities will soon unfold."
• If you just type that sentence into your essay and put quotes around it, your reader will be disoriented. Instead, you could incorporate it into a sentence like this: "The imagery in the story mirrors what's happening in Lia's love life, as 'The brown leaves symbolize the death of their relationship, while the green buds suggest new opportunities will soon unfold.'"

• "Critic Alex Li says, 'The frequent references to the color blue are used to suggest that the family is struggling to cope with the loss of their matriarch.'"
• "According to McKinney’s research, 'Adults who do yoga at least three times a week have lower blood pressure, better sleeping patterns, and fewer everyday frustrations.'"
• "Based on several recent studies, people are more likely to sit on the park benches when they're shaded by trees."

• You still need to use quotation marks even if you're only quoting a few words.
• If you're in doubt, it's best to be cautious and use quotes.

• For example, let’s say you used the quote, “According to McKinney’s research, ‘Adults who do yoga at least three times a week have lower blood pressure, better sleeping patterns, and fewer everyday frustrations.’” Your commentary might read, “This shows that yoga can have a positive impact on people’s health, so incorporating it into the workplace can help improve employee health outcomes. Since yoga makes employees healthier, they’ll likely have reduced insurance costs.”

• When you use a paraphrase, you still need to provide commentary that links the paraphrased material back to your thesis and ideas.

Using a Long Quote

• The reader will recognize that the material is a direct quote because it's set off from the rest of the text. That's why you don't need to use quotation marks. However, you will include your citation at the bottom.

• "In The Things They Carried , the items carried by soldiers in the Vietnam war are used to both characterize them and burden the readers with the weight they are carrying: The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water." (O'Brien 2)

Variation: When you're citing two or more paragraphs, you must use block quotes, even if the passage you want to quote is less than four lines long. You should indent the first line of each paragraph an extra quarter inch. Then, use ellipses (…) at the end of one paragraph to transition to the next.

• Your block quote will use the same spacing as the rest of your paper, which will likely be double-spacing.

• For example, “According to Li, “Rosa is the first sister to pick a rose because she’s the only one who’s begun to move on after their mother’s death” might become “According to Li, “Rosa is the first sister to pick a rose because she’s … begun to move on after their mother’s death.”
• Don’t eliminate words to change the meaning of the original text. For instance, it’s not appropriate to use an ellipsis to change “plants did not grow faster when exposed to poetry” to “plants did … grow faster when exposed to poetry.”

• For example, let’s say you want to use the quote, “All of them experienced a more relaxed, calmer disposition after doing yoga for 6 months.” This doesn’t tell the reader who you’re talking about. You could use brackets to say, “All of [the teachers in the study] experienced a more relaxed, calmer disposition after doing yoga for 6 months.”
• However, if you know the study is talking about teachers, you couldn’t use brackets to say, “All of [society experiences] a more relaxed, calmer disposition after doing yoga for 6 months.”

• If you don't explain your quote well, then it's not helping your ideas. You can't expect the reader to connect the quote back to your thesis for you.

• For instance, you may prefer to use a long block quote to present a passage from a literary work that demonstrates the author's style. However, let's say you were using a journal article to provide a critic's perspective on an author's work. You may not need to directly quote an entire paragraph word-for-word to get their point across. Instead, use a paraphrase.

Tip: If you’re unsure about a quote, ask yourself, “Can I paraphrase this in more concise language and not lose any support for my argument?” If the answer is yes, a quote is not necessary.

Citing Your Quote

• An MLA citation will look like this: (Lopez 24)
• For sources with multiple authors, separate their names with the word “and:” (Anderson and Smith 55-56) or (Taylor, Gomez, and Austin 89)
• If you use the author’s name in your lead-in to the quote, you just need to provide the year in parentheses: According to Luz Lopez, “the green grass symbolizes a fresh start for Lia (24).”

• An APA citation for a direct quote looks like this: (Ronan, 2019, p. 10)
• If you’re citing multiple authors, separate their names with the word “and:” (Cruz, Hanks, and Simmons, 2019, p. 85)
• If you incorporated the author’s name into your lead-in, you can just give the year and page number: Based on Ronan’s (2019, p. 10) analysis, “coffee breaks improve productivity.”

• For instance, a Chicago Style citation will look like this: (Alexander 2019, 125)
• If you’re quoting a source with multiple authors, separate them with the word “and:” (Pattinson, Stewart, and Green 2019, 175)
• If you already incorporated the author’s name into your quote, then you can just provide the year and page number: According to Alexander, “the smell of roses increases feelings of happiness” (2019, 125).

• For MLA, you'd cite an article like this: Lopez, Luz. "A Fresh Blossom: Imagery in 'Her Darkest Sunshine.'" Journal of Stories , vol. 2, no. 5, 2019, p. 15-22. [17] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• In APA, you'd cite an article like this: Lopez, Luz. (2019). A Fresh Blossom: Imagery in "Her Darkest Sunshine." Journal of Stories , 2(5), 15-22. [18] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• For Chicago Style, your article citation would look like this: Lopez, Luz. "A Fresh Blossom: Imagery in 'Her Darkest Sunshine.'" Journal of Stories 2 no. 4 (2019): 15-22. [19] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source

Selecting a Quote

Tip: Quotes are most effective when the original language of the person or text you’re quoting is worth repeating word-for-word.

• If you’re struggling to explain the quote or link it back to your argument, then it’s likely not a good idea to include it in your essay.

• Paraphrases and summaries work just like a direct quote, except that you don’t need to put quotation marks around them because you’re using your own words to restate ideas. However, you still need to cite the sources you used.

Community Q&A

• Always cite your quotes properly. If you don't, it is considered plagiarism. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.ursinus.edu/live/files/1160-integrating-quotespdf
• ↑ https://lsa.umich.edu/sweetland/undergraduates/writing-guides/how-do-i-incorporate-quotes-.html
• ↑ https://helpfulprofessor.com/quotes/
• ↑ https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/using-sources/quotations/
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_quotations.html
• ↑ https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/apaquickguide/intext
• ↑ https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_articles_in_periodicals.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/periodicals.html
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/quotations/

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To put a quote in an essay, incorporate it directly into a sentence if it's shorter than 4 typed lines. For example, you could write "According to researchers," and then insert the quote. If a quote is longer than 4 typed lines, set it off from the rest of the paragraph, and don't put quotes around it. After the quote, include an in-text citation so readers know where it's from. The right way to cite the quote will depend on whether you're using MLA, APA, or Chicago Style formatting. For more tips from our English co-author, like how to omit words from a quote, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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A Guide to Using Quotations in Essays

Quotations Add Credibility to a Persuasive Essay

• Love Quotes
• Great Lines from Movies and Television
• Quotations For Holidays
• Best Sellers
• Classic Literature
• Plays & Drama
• Shakespeare
• Short Stories
• Children's Books
• M.B.A, Human Resource Development and Management, Narsee Monjee Institution of Management Studies
• B.S., University of Mumbai, Commerce, Accounting, and Finance

If you want to make an impact on your reader, you can draw on the potency of quotations. The  effective use of quotations  augments the power of your arguments and makes your essays more interesting.

But there is a need for caution! Are you convinced that the quotation you have chosen is helping your essay and not hurting it? Here are some factors to consider to ensure that you are doing the right thing.

What Is This Quotation Doing in This Essay?

Let us begin at the beginning. You have a chosen a quotation for your essay. But, why that specific quotation?

A good quotation should do one or more of the following:

• Make an opening impact on the reader
• Build credibility for your essay
• Make the essay more interesting
• Close the essay with a point to ponder upon

If the quotation does not meet a few of these objectives, then it is of little value. Merely stuffing a quotation into your essay can do more harm than good.

Your Essay Is Your Mouthpiece

Should the quotation speak for the essay or should the essay speak for the quotation? Quotations should add impact to the essay and not steal the show. If your quotation has more punch than your essay, then something is seriously wrong. Your essay should be able to stand on its own legs; the quotation should merely make this stand stronger.

How Many Quotations Should You Use in Your Essay?

Using too many quotations is like having several people shouting on your behalf. This will drown out your voice. Refrain from overcrowding your essay with words of wisdom from famous people. You own the essay, so make sure that you are heard.

Don't Make It Look Like You Plagiarized

There are some rules and standards when using quotations in an essay. The most important one is that you should not give the impression of being the author of the quotation. That would amount to plagiarism . Here are a set of rules to clearly distinguish your writing from the quotation:

• You may describe the quotation in your own words before using it. In this case, you should use a colon (:) to indicate the beginning of the quotation. Then begin the quotation with a quotation mark ("). After you have completed the quotation, close it with a quotation mark ("). Here is an example: Sir Winston Churchill made a witty remark on the attitude of a pessimist: "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
• The sentence in which the quotation is embedded might not explicitly describe the quotation, but merely introduce it. In such a case, do away with the colon. Simply use the quotation marks . Here is an example: Sir Winston Churchill once said, "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
• As far as possible, you should mention the author and the source of the quotation. For instance: In Shakespeare ’s play "As You Like It," Touchstone says to Audrey in the Forest of Arden, "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." (Act V, Scene I).
• Ensure that the source of your quotation is authentic. Also, verify the author of your quotation. You can do so by looking up the quotation on authoritative websites. For formal writing, do not rely on just one website.

Blend Quotations In

An essay can seem quite jarring if the quotation does not blend in. The quotation should naturally fit into your essay. No one is interested in reading quotation-stuffed essays.

Here are some good tips on blending in your quotations:

• You can begin your essay with a quotation that sets off the basic idea of the essay. This can have a lasting impact on your reader. In the introductory paragraph of your essay, you can comment on the quotation if you like. In any case, do ensure that the relevance of the quotation is communicated well.
• Your choice of phrases and adjectives can significantly boost the impact of the quotation in your essay. Do not use monotonous phrases like: "George Washington once said...." If your essay is written for the appropriate context, consider using emphatic expressions like: "George Washington rocked the nation by saying...."

Using Long Quotations

It is usually better to have short and crisp quotations in your essay. Generally, long quotations must be used sparingly as they tend to weigh down the reader. However, there are times when your essay has more impact with a longer quotation.

If you have decided to use a long quotation, consider paraphrasing , as it usually works better. But, there is a downside to paraphrasing too. Instead of paraphrasing, if you use a direct quotation , you will avoid misrepresentation. The decision to use a long quotation is not trivial. It is your judgment call.

If you are convinced that a particular long quotation is more effective, be sure to format and punctuate it correctly.   Long quotations should be set off as block quotations . The format of block quotations should follow the guidelines that you might have been provided. If there are no specific guidelines, you can follow the usual standard—if a quotation is more than three lines long, you set it off as a block quote. Blocking implies indenting it about half an inch on the left.

Usually, a brief introduction to a long quotation is warranted. In other cases, you might need to provide a complete analysis of the quotation. In this case, it is best to begin with the quotation and follow it with the analysis, rather than the other way around.

Using Cute Quotes or Poetry

Some students choose a cute quotation first and then try to plug it into their essay. As a consequence, such quotations usually drag the reader away from the essay.

Quoting a verse from a poem, however, can add a lot of charm to your essay. I have come across writing that acquires a romantic edge merely by including a poetic quotation. If you are quoting from poetry, keep in mind that a small extract of a poem, say about two lines long, requires the use of slash marks (/) to indicate line breaks. Here is an example:

Charles Lamb has aptly described a child as "A child's a plaything for an hour;/ Its pretty tricks we try / For that or for a longer space; / Then tire, and lay it by." (1-4)

If you use a single line extract of a poem, punctuate it like any other short quotation without the slashes. Quotation marks are required at the beginning and at the end of the extract. However, if your quotation is more than three lines of poetry, I would suggest that you treat it like you would have treated a long quotation from prose. In this case, you should use the block quote format.

Does Your Reader Understand the Quotation?

Perhaps the most important question you must ask yourself when using a quotation is: "Do readers understand the quotation and its relevance to my essay ?"

If the reader is re-reading a quotation, just to understand it, then you are in trouble. So when you choose a quotation for your essay, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is this too convoluted for my reader?
• Does this match the tastes of my audience ?
• Is the grammar and vocabulary in this quotation understandable?
• How to Use Block Quotations in Writing
• Definition and Examples of Direct Quotations
• Definition and Examples of Quotation in English Grammar
• How to Use Shakespeare Quotes
• Guidelines for Using Quotation Marks Correctly
• What Is an Indentation?
• Practice in Using Quotation Marks Correctly
• How To Write an Essay
• Difference Between "Quote" and "Quotation": What Is the Right Word?
• The Five Steps of Writing an Essay
• What Is a Blockquote?
• 501 Topic Suggestions for Writing Essays and Speeches
• Writing a Descriptive Essay
• How and When to Paraphrase Quotations
• Write an Attention-Grabbing Opening Sentence for an Essay

Using Literary Quotations

Use the guidelines below to learn how to use literary quotations.

Download this Handout PDF

Introduction

When you’re asked to write a paper analyzing a work of literature, your instructor probably expects you to incorporate quotations from that literary text into your analysis. But how do you do this well? What kind of quotations do you use? How do you seamlessly weave together your ideas with someone else’s words?

On this page we clarify the purpose of using literary quotations in literary analysis papers by exploring why quotations are important to use in your writing and then explaining how to do this. We provide general guidelines and specific suggestions about blending your prose and quoted material as well as information about formatting logistics and various rules for handling outside text.

Although this material is focused on integrating your ideas with quotations from novels, poems, and plays into literary analysis papers, in some genres this advice is equally applicable to incorporating quotations from scholarly essays, reports, or even original research into your work.

For further information, check out our Quoting and Paraphrasing resource, or you may wish to see when the Writing Center is offering its next introductory workshop about the genre of literary analysis. Additionally, our Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis offers wonderful insight into how you can read a piece of literature in order to analyze it.

Why should I use literary quotations?

Within a literary analysis, your purpose is to develop an argument about what the author of the text is doing—how the text “works.” You use quotations to support this argument. This involves selecting, presenting, and discussing material from the text in order to “prove” your point—to make your case—in much the same way a lawyer brings evidence before a jury.

Quoting for any other purpose is counterproductive. Don’t quote to “tell the story” or otherwise convey basic information about the text; most of the time within this genre you can assume your reader knows the text. And don’t quote just for the sake of quoting or to fill up space.

How do I use literary quotations?

General guidelines.

The following paragraph is from a student’s analysis of the relationship between two characters in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse . Notice how statements expressing the writer’s ideas and observations are verified with evidence from the novel in both summarized and quoted form.

We learn about Mrs. Ramsey’s personality by observing her feelings about other characters. For example, Mrs. Ramsey has mixed feelings toward Mr. Tansley, but her feelings seem to grow more positive over time as she comes to know him better. At first Mrs. Ramsey finds Mr. Tansley annoying, as shown especially when he mentions that no one is going to the lighthouse (7). But rather than hating him, she feels pity: “she pitied men always as if they lacked something . . .” (85). Then later, during the gathering, pity turns to empathy as she realizes that Mr. Tansley must feel inferior. He must know, Mrs. Ramsey thinks, that “no woman would look at him with Paul Rayley in the room” (104). Finally, by the end of the dinner scene, she feels some attraction to Mr. Tansley and also a new respect: “She liked his laugh . . . She liked his awkwardness. There was a lot in that man after all” (110). In observing this evolution in her attitude, we learn more about Mrs. Ramsey than we do about Mr. Tansley. The change in Mrs. Ramsey’s attitude is not used by Woolf to show that Mrs. Ramsey is fickle or confused; rather it is used to show her capacity for understanding both the frailty and complexity of human beings. This is a central characteristic of Mrs. Ramsey’s personality.

Your ideas + textual evidence + discussion

Notice that this paragraph includes three basic kinds of materials: (a) statements expressing the student’s own ideas about the relationship Woolf is creating; (b) data or evidence from the text in summarized, paraphrased, and quoted form; and (c) discussion of how the data support the writer’s interpretation. All the quotations are used in accordance with the writer’s purpose, i.e., to show how the development of Mrs. Ramsey’s feelings indicates something about her personality.

Textual evidence options

Quoting is only one of several ways to present textual material as evidence. You can also refer to textual data, summarize, and paraphrase. You will often want merely to refer or point to passages (as in the third sentence in the above example paragraph) that contribute to your argument. In other cases, you will want to paraphrase, i.e., “translate” the original into your own words, again instead of quoting. Summarize or paraphrase when it is not so much the language of the text that justifies your position, but the substance or content.

Quoting selectively

Similarly, after you have decided that you want to quote material, quote only the portions of the text specifically relevant to your point . Think of the text in terms of units—words, phrases, sentences, and groups of sentences (paragraphs, stanzas)—and use only the units you need. If it is particular words or phrases that “prove” your point, you do not need to quote the full sentences they appear in; rather, incorporate the words and phrases into your own sentences that focus on your own ideas.

Blending your prose and quoted material

It is permissible to quote an entire sentence (between two sentences of your own), but in general you should avoid this method of bringing textual material into your discussion. Instead, use one of the following patterns:

An introducing phrase or orienter plus the quotation:

• In Blake’s poem “The Tyger,” it is creation, not a hypothetical creator, that is supremely awesome. [ argument sentence ]. The speaker asks, “What immortal hand or eye / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” [ data sentence; orienter before quote ]
• Gatsby is not to be regarded as a personal failure. [ argument sentence ] “Gatsby turned out all right at the end” (2), according to Nick. [ data sentence; orienter after quote ]
• “Our baby was a boy,” Shukumar tells his wife in the conclusion of Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter” (22). [ data sentence; orienter after quote ] This admission is a death knell, tolling the end of their failing marriage. [ argument sentence ]

An assertion of your own and a colon plus the quotation:

• In the midst of discussing the fate of the Abame tribe, Uchendu presents his own theory: “There is no story that is not true” (141).
• Fitzgerald gives Nick a muted tribute to the hero: “Gatsby turned out all right at the end” (2).
• Within Othello , Cassio represents not only a political but also a personal threat to Iago: “He hath a daily beauty in his life / That makes me ugly . . .” (5.1.19-20).

An assertion of your own with quoted material worked in:

• For Nick, who remarks that Gatsby “turned out all right” (2), the hero deserves respect but perhaps does not inspire great admiration.
• Satan’s motion is many things; he “strides” through the air (55), arrives like a “rattling” cloud (56), and later explodes—“wandering,” “hovering and blazing” like a fire (270).
• Walking through Geraldine’s house, Pecola “wanted to see everything slowly, slowly” in order to fully appreciate its comparative order and opulence (Morrison 89).

Maintaining clarity and readability

Introduce a quotation either by indicating what it is intended to show, by naming its source, or by doing both. For non-narrative poetry, it’s customary to attribute quotations to “the speaker”; for a story with a narrator, to “the narrator.” For plays, novels, and other works with characters, identify characters as you quote them.

Do not use two quotations in a row without intervening text of your own. You should always be contextualizing all of your outside material with your own ideas, and if you let quotes build up without a break, readers will lose track of your argument.

Using the correct verb tense is a tricky issue. It’s customary in literary analysis to use the present tense; this is because it is at the present time that you (and your reader) are looking at the text. But events in a narrative or drama take place in a time sequence. You will often need to use a past tense to refer to events that took place before the moment you are presently discussing. Consider this example:

When he hears Cordelia’s answer, King Lear seems surprised, but not dumbfounded. He advises her to “mend [her] speech a little.” He had expected her to praise him the most; but compared to her sisters’, her remarks seem almost insulting (1.1.95).

Formatting logistics and guidelines

If for the sake of brevity you wish to omit material from a quoted passage, use ellipsis points (three spaced periods) to indicate the omission. Notice how in the paragraph about To the Lighthouse , above, the writer quoted only those portions of the original sentences that related to the point of the analysis.

When quoting, you may alter grammatical forms such as the tense of a verb or the person of a pronoun so that the quotation conforms grammatically to your own prose; indicate these alterations by placing square brackets around the changed form. In the quotation about King Lear at the end of the previous section, “her” replaces the “your” of the original so that the quote fits the point of view of the paper (third person).

Reproduce the spelling, capitalization, and internal punctuation of the original exactly. Of the following sentences presenting D. H. Lawrence’s maxim, “Books are not life,” the first is not acceptable in some style systems.

• For Lawrence, “books are not life.” [ UNACCEPTABLE ]
• For Lawrence, “[b]ooks are not life.” [ acceptable but awkward ]
• Lawrence wrote, “Books are not life.” [ acceptable ]
• “Books,” Lawrence wrote, “are not life.” [ acceptable ]
• For Lawrence, books “are not life.” [ acceptable ]

Punctuation

You may alter the closing punctuation of a quotation in order to incorporate it into a sentence of your own. For example:

• “Books are not life,” Lawrence emphasized.

Commas and periods go inside the closing quotation marks; the other punctuation marks go outside. For example:

• Lawrence insisted that books “are not life”; however, he wrote exultantly about the power of the novel.
• Why does Lawrence need to point out that “Books are not life”?

When quoting lines of poetry up to three lines long (which are not indented), separate one line of poetry from another with a slash mark with a space on either side (see examples from Blake’s “The Tyger” and Shakespeare’s Othello above).

Indentation

Prose or verse quotations less than four lines long are not indented. For quotations of this length, use the patterns described above.

“Longer” quotations should be formatted according to the expectations of a block quote. This unit of text should be positioned one half inch from the left margin, and opening and closing quotation marks are not used. The MLA Handbook , 8 th edition (2016) recommends that indented quotations be double-spaced, but many instructors prefer them single-spaced. The meaning of “longer” varies slightly from one style system to another, but a general rule is to indent quotations that are more than two (or three) lines of verse or four lines of prose.

If you’re quoting a series of dialogue dialogue between characters in a play, indent these lines and place the speaker’s name before the speech quoted. For example:

• CAESAR: Et tu, Brute! Then, fall, Caesar! CINNA: Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead! (3.1.77-78)

Documentation

Follow your course instructor’s guidelines for documenting sources. If your instructor hasn’t told you which system to use to document sources, ask.

The documentation style used in this handout is that presented in the MLA Handbook , 8 th edition (2016), the most common citation style for literary analysis papers. The Writing Center has information about the rules of documentation within the most common systems .

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinau. Things Fall Apart . 1959. Anchor Books, 1994.

Blake, William. “The Tyger.” Poets.org , American Academy of Poets, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/tyger. Accessed 1 July 2018.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby . 1925. The Scribner Library, 1953.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. “A Temporary Matter.” Interpreter of Maladies , Mariner Books, 1999, pp. 1-22.

Lawrence, David Herbert. “Why the Novel Matters.” Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays , edited by Bruce Steele, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 191-8.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost . Printed for John Bumpus, 1821. Google Books , https://books.google.com/books?id=pO4MAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Accessed 1 July 2018.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye . 1970. Plume, 1993.

Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Wordsworth Editions, pp. 582-610.

–. King Lear. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare . Wordsworth Editions, pp. 885-923.

–. Othello, the Moor of Venice. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare . Wordsworth Editions, pp. 818-57.

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse . 1927. Harcourt, 1981.

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How to Use a Quote in an Essay

Table of Contents

MLA in-text citation how-to

You can take a quote from different sources of information, such as books, magazines, websites or printed journals. Using quotes in an essay serves three goals:

• Present additional evidence to support your point of view or oppose a claim or idea;
• Help a reader better understand a topic under analysis;
• Strengthen your argumentation on a topic using another writer’s eloquence.

Since quotes are mostly used in Humanities, you’ll have to follow MLA citation referencing guidelines. The Modern Language Association citation manual implies two types of quotes – short and long.

• Short quote – Is less than 4 lines of typed text and can be embedded directly into a sentence;
• Long quote – Is more than 4 lines of typed text and requires a separate content block in an essay without quotation marks.

Writing college essays, the recommendation is to use short quotes.

Parenthetical citation

Referring to the works of other authors in-text is done using a parenthetical citation . Such a method implies the author-page style of quoting. For example:

When it comes to writing, King suggests: “Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.” (5)

Given the MLA in-text citation already contains King’s last name, you shouldn’t mention it in the parenthesis. If the author’s name isn’t mentioned in-text, it has to be specified in a parenthetical citation.

When it comes to writing, there’s a quote I like the most: “Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.” (King 5)

According to MLA guidelines, at the end of the essay, there has to be the Works Cited page . It contains the full reference featuring author’s full name, the full title of the source, the volume, the issue number, the date of publishing, and the URL (if the source was found online). Here’s an example of the full referencing in the Works Cited:

King, Larry L. “The Collection of Best Works.” Oxford University Press, vol. 2, no. 3, Jan.-Feb. 2017, http://www.prowritersdigest.com/editor-blogs/inspirational-quotes/72-of-the-best-quotes-about-writing.

How to start an essay with a quote?

Starting an essay with a quote is a matter of controversy. Experts in the pro camp suggest that a quote at the beginning of an essay helps make a powerful statement right from the start. Moreover, an interesting, captivating quote grabs the reader’s attention right from the start.

Experts from the against camp suggest that when you begin an essay with a quote, you miss on the opportunity to present your own take on the subject matter. In their opinion, when writing the introduction, you have to rely only on your words. Whereas quotes are most useful in the main body, serving as an additional argumentation. In conclusion, a quote can be placed, too.

How to use quotes in the middle of an essay?

Main Body is the place you’re meant to state a quote or two, depending on the length of a paper. A standard 5-paragraph essay will imply you to use 2-3 quotes in the main body. More quotes aren’t necessary for such a short assignment. Two quotes in the main body will do just fine.

In the main body paragraph, a quote is placed in the middle of the passage . First, you introduce a focal sentence of a paragraph highlighting your point of view regarding a topic. After that, you provide the evidence data and argumentation, among which is a relevant quote. And finally, you smoothly transit to the next body paragraph or the conclusion. Here’re three examples of how to present a quote in one of the main body paragraphs.

Accurate integration of a citation in a text is key. Or the whole passage will sound off.

People who want to become a writer don’t really need any piece of advice. “Those (…) who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.”

College essay quotes have to be naturally embedded in a text .

People who want to become a writer don’t really need any piece of advice: “Those (…) who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.”

There’s also the way to write an essay with quotes in the smoothest way possible.

People who want to become a writer don’t really need any piece of advice. They simply “know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.”

See how organically a quote is inserted in a sentence? That’s the best-case scenario of using a quote in a sentence.

How to end an essay with a quote?

Sometimes, ending an essay with a quote is better than merely restating your thesis statement. Citations can be taken from both primary and secondary sources. Good quotes to end an essay might be of your course professor’s. According to essay writing websites , quotations taken from the words of subject authorities and thought leaders will do great, too.

A quote ending an essay helps meet 5 objectives:

• Provide a solid closure to your essay;
• Fortify your point of view;
• Give one final argument in favor of your thesis statement;
• Establish your authority on a topic;
• Helps your essay stand out.

Having a quotation at the end of an essay gives a good chance to score an “A”.

15 tips for using quotations in an essay

• Look up quotes in academic sources in the first place;
• Rely on the printed matter rather than internet sources;
• Avoid citing information from Wikipedia;
• Give context to every quotation you use;
• Always use quotation marks to avoid plagiarism-related troubles;
• Explain why the quote you’re about to use in a text is important;
• Seek to integrate quotes smoothly in a sentence for the best effect;
• Each quotation has to be attributed to the original source using parenthesis;
• Gather 10-15 quotes relevant to your topic and then sift through 5 quotes that will serve you best;
• Use the exact wording, punctuation, capitalization and sentence structure as in the original;
• Watch your punctuation when using quotes in a sentence;
• Avoid misquotations, as it’s a sign of a careless attitude towards the assignment;
• Use an ellipsis (…) to withdraw a part of a quote you don’t actually need;
• Try to use short quotes rather than long;
• Avoid quoting quotes, as it’s where students make mistakes most often.

5 motivational quotes for essay writing

Inspiration is a staple in every great writer’s routine. As a student, you might find drawing inspiration a bit too difficult. Here’re a couple of inspiring essay motivation quotes to help you break through the writer’s block. Or you can buy argumentative essay if doing the task yourself isn’t an option.

“I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.”

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.”

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is … the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

“Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it’s work . … Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything.”

“To defend what you’ve written is a sign that you are alive.”

Many times life catches us off balance. Lots of written homework. Tight schedule. Sudden illness. Personal matters. Writer’s block. An instructor returned the essay for revisions. At the moments like these, it’s always a good idea to have someone to cover your back. GradeMiners can always write you a new essay, rewrite an existing draft, perform an ending an essay with a quote, or proofread your text for mistakes, typos, as well as correct the use of quotations. Let us know if you need anything, and we’ll help you out!

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• How to Quote | Citing Quotes in Harvard & APA

How to Quote | Citing Quotes in Harvard & APA

Published on 15 April 2022 by Shona McCombes and Jack Caulfield. Revised on 3 September 2022.

Quoting means copying a passage of someone else’s words and crediting the source. To quote a source, you must ensure:

• The quoted text is enclosed in quotation marks (usually single quotation marks in UK English, though double is acceptable as long as you’re consistent) or formatted as a block quote
• The original author is correctly cited
• The text is identical to the original

The exact format of a quote depends on its length and on which citation style you are using. Quoting and citing correctly is essential to avoid plagiarism , which is easy to detect with a good plagiarism checker .

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Table of contents

How to cite a quote in harvard and apa style, introducing quotes, quotes within quotes, shortening or altering a quote, block quotes, when should i use quotes, frequently asked questions about quoting sources.

Every time you quote, you must cite the source correctly . This looks slightly different depending on the citation style you’re using.

Citing a quote in Harvard style

When you include a quote in Harvard style, you must add a Harvard in-text citation giving the author’s last name, the year of publication, and a page number if available. Any full stop or comma appears after the citation, not within the quotation marks.

Citations can be parenthetical or narrative. In a parenthetical citation , you place all the information in brackets after the quote. In a narrative citation , you name the author in your sentence (followed by the year), and place the page number after the quote.

• Evolution is a gradual process that ‘can act only by very short and slow steps’ (Darwin, 1859, p. 510) . Darwin (1859) explains that evolution ‘can act only by very short and slow steps’ (p. 510) .

Complete guide to Harvard style

Citing a quote in APA Style

To cite a direct quote in APA , you must include the author’s last name, the year, and a page number, all separated by commas. If the quote appears on a single page, use ‘p.’; if it spans a page range, use ‘pp.’

An APA in-text citation can be parenthetical or narrative. In a parenthetical citation , you place all the information in parentheses after the quote. In a narrative citation , you name the author in your sentence (followed by the year), and place the page number after the quote.

Punctuation marks such as full stops and commas are placed after the citation, not within the quotation marks.

• Evolution is a gradual process that ‘can act only by very short and slow steps’ (Darwin, 1859, p. 510) .
• Darwin (1859) explains that evolution ‘can act only by very short and slow steps’ (p. 510) .

Complete guide to APA

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Make sure you integrate quotes properly into your text by introducing them in your own words, showing the reader why you’re including the quote and providing any context necessary to understand it.  Don’t  present quotations as stand-alone sentences.

There are three main strategies you can use to introduce quotes in a grammatically correct way:

• Add an introductory sentence
• Use an introductory signal phrase
• Integrate the quote into your own sentence

The following examples use APA Style citations, but these strategies can be used in all styles.

Introductory sentence

Introduce the quote with a full sentence ending in a colon . Don’t use a colon if the text before the quote isn’t a full sentence.

If you name the author in your sentence, you may use present-tense verbs, such as “states’, ‘argues’, ‘explains’, ‘writes’, or ‘reports’, to describe the content of the quote.

• In Denmark, a recent poll shows that: ‘A membership referendum held today would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ (Levring, 2018, p. 3).
• In Denmark, a recent poll shows that support for the EU has grown since the Brexit vote: ‘A membership referendum held today would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ (Levring, 2018, p. 3).
• Levring (2018) reports that support for the EU has grown since the Brexit vote: ‘A membership referendum held today would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ (p. 3).

Introductory signal phrase

You can also use a signal phrase that mentions the author or source but doesn’t form a full sentence. In this case, you follow the phrase with a comma instead of a colon.

• According to a recent poll, ‘A membership referendum held today would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ (Levring, 2018, p. 3).
• As Levring (2018) explains, ‘A membership referendum held today would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ (p. 3).

Integrated into your own sentence

To quote a phrase that doesn’t form a full sentence, you can also integrate it as part of your sentence, without any extra punctuation.

• A recent poll suggests that EU membership ‘would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ in a referendum (Levring, 2018, p. 3).
• Levring (2018) reports that EU membership ‘would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ in a referendum (p. 3).

When you quote text that itself contains another quote, this is called a nested quotation or a quote within a quote. It may occur, for example, when quoting dialogue from a novel.

To distinguish this quote from the surrounding quote, you enclose it in double (instead of single) quotation marks (even if this involves changing the punctuation from the original text). Make sure to close both sets of quotation marks at the appropriate moments.

Note that if you only quote the nested quotation itself, and not the surrounding text, you can just use single quotation marks.

• Carraway introduces his narrative by quoting his father: ‘ ‘ Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, ‘ he told me, ‘ just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had ‘ ‘ (Fitzgerald 1).
• Carraway introduces his narrative by quoting his father: ‘”Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had “  (Fitzgerald 1).
• Carraway introduces his narrative by quoting his father: ‘“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had”’ (Fitzgerald 1).
• Carraway begins by quoting his father’s invocation to ‘remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had’ (Fitzgerald 1).

Note:  When the quoted text in the source comes from another source, it’s best to just find that original source in order to quote it directly. If you can’t find the original source, you can instead cite it indirectly .

Often, incorporating a quote smoothly into your text requires you to make some changes to the original text. It’s fine to do this, as long as you clearly mark the changes you’ve made to the quote.

Shortening a quote

If some parts of a passage are redundant or irrelevant, you can shorten the quote by removing words, phrases, or sentences and replacing them with an ellipsis (…). Put a space before and after the ellipsis.

Be careful that removing the words doesn’t change the meaning. The ellipsis indicates that some text has been removed, but the shortened quote should still accurately represent the author’s point.

Altering a quote

You can add or replace words in a quote when necessary. This might be because the original text doesn’t fit grammatically with your sentence (e.g., it’s in a different tense), or because extra information is needed to clarify the quote’s meaning.

Use brackets to distinguish words that you have added from words that were present in the original text.

The Latin term ‘ sic ‘ is used to indicate a (factual or grammatical) mistake in a quotation. It shows the reader that the mistake is from the quoted material, not a typo of your own.

In some cases, it can be useful to italicise part of a quotation to add emphasis, showing the reader that this is the key part to pay attention to. Use the phrase ’emphasis added’ to show that the italics were not part of the original text.

You usually don’t need to use brackets to indicate minor changes to punctuation or capitalisation made to ensure the quote fits the style of your text.

If you quote more than a few lines from a source, you must format it as a block quote . Instead of using quotation marks, you set the quote on a new line and indent it so that it forms a separate block of text.

Block quotes are cited just like regular quotes, except that if the quote ends with a full stop, the citation appears after the full stop.

To the end of his days Bilbo could never remember how he found himself outside, without a hat, a walking-stick or any money, or anything that he usually took when he went out; leaving his second breakfast half-finished and quite unwashed-up, pushing his keys into Gandalf’s hands, and running as fast as his furry feet could carry him down the lane, past the great Mill, across The Water, and then on for a mile or more. (16)

Avoid relying too heavily on quotes in academic writing . To integrate a source , it’s often best to paraphrase , which means putting the passage into your own words. This helps you integrate information smoothly and keeps your own voice dominant.

However, there are some situations in which quotes are more appropriate.

When focusing on language

If you want to comment on how the author uses language (for example, in literary analysis ), it’s necessary to quote so that the reader can see the exact passage you are referring to.

When giving evidence

To convince the reader of your argument, interpretation or position on a topic, it’s often helpful to include quotes that support your point. Quotes from primary sources (for example, interview transcripts or historical documents) are especially credible as evidence.

When presenting an author’s position or definition

When you’re referring to secondary sources such as scholarly books and journal articles, try to put others’ ideas in your own words when possible.

But if a passage does a great job at expressing, explaining, or defining something, and it would be very difficult to paraphrase without changing the meaning or losing the weakening the idea’s impact, it’s worth quoting directly.

A quote is an exact copy of someone else’s words, usually enclosed in quotation marks and credited to the original author or speaker.

To present information from other sources in academic writing , it’s best to paraphrase in most cases. This shows that you’ve understood the ideas you’re discussing and incorporates them into your text smoothly.

It’s appropriate to quote when:

• Changing the phrasing would distort the meaning of the original text
• You want to discuss the author’s language choices (e.g., in literary analysis )
• You’re presenting a precise definition
• You’re looking in depth at a specific claim

Every time you quote a source , you must include a correctly formatted in-text citation . This looks slightly different depending on the citation style .

For example, a direct quote in APA is cited like this: ‘This is a quote’ (Streefkerk, 2020, p. 5).

Every in-text citation should also correspond to a full reference at the end of your paper.

In scientific subjects, the information itself is more important than how it was expressed, so quoting should generally be kept to a minimum. In the arts and humanities, however, well-chosen quotes are often essential to a good paper.

In social sciences, it varies. If your research is mainly quantitative , you won’t include many quotes, but if it’s more qualitative , you may need to quote from the data you collected .

As a general guideline, quotes should take up no more than 5–10% of your paper. If in doubt, check with your instructor or supervisor how much quoting is appropriate in your field.

If you’re quoting from a text that paraphrases or summarises other sources and cites them in parentheses , APA  recommends retaining the citations as part of the quote:

• Smith states that ‘the literature on this topic (Jones, 2015; Sill, 2019; Paulson, 2020) shows no clear consensus’ (Smith, 2019, p. 4).

Footnote or endnote numbers that appear within quoted text should be omitted.

If you want to cite an indirect source (one you’ve only seen quoted in another source), either locate the original source or use the phrase ‘as cited in’ in your citation.

A block quote is a long quote formatted as a separate ‘block’ of text. Instead of using quotation marks , you place the quote on a new line, and indent the entire quote to mark it apart from your own words.

APA uses block quotes for quotes that are 40 words or longer.

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If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. & Caulfield, J. (2022, September 03). How to Quote | Citing Quotes in Harvard & APA. Scribbr. Retrieved 6 May 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/working-sources/quoting/

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• Writing Tips

How to Introduce Quotes in Academic Writing

3-minute read

• 17th October 2019

It would be hard to write a good essay  without quoting sources. And as well as using quote marks , this means working quotations into your own writing. But how can you do this? In this post, we provide a few helpful tips on how to introduce quotes (short and long) in academic writing.

Introducing Short Quotations

The easiest way to quote a source is to work a short passage (sometimes just a single word) into your own sentence. For example:

The tomb was one of archaeology’s “most intriguing discoveries” (Andronicus, 1978, p. 55) and has fascinated researchers ever since.

Here, the only requirements placing the quoted text within quotation marks and making sure the quote follows grammatically from the surrounding text.

Quoting After a Colon

If you need to quote a source after a full sentence, introduce it with a colon:

On the basis of Philip II’s estimated date of death, Andronicus (1978) draws a conclusion :  “This, in all probability, must be his tomb” (p. 76).

When using a colon to introduce a quotation, the text before the colon must be a full sentence. The text after the colon, however, can be just a few words.

Quoting After a Comma

Alternatively, you can use a comma to introduce a quote. When doing this, the quoted text should follow from the preceding sentence (usually after a word like “says” or “argues”):

Andronicus (1978) says ,  “The weapons bore witness that the tomb could not have belonged to a commoner” (p. 73).

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However, when a quote follows the word “that,” no comma is needed:

Andronicus (1978) says  that “The weapons bore witness that the tomb could not have belonged to a commoner” (p. 73).

Block Quotes

Finally, for longer quotations, use a  block quote . These are also introduced with a colon, but they don’t have to follow a full sentence. Furthermore, quoted text should be indented and the block quote should begin on a new line. For example, we could introduce a block quote as follows:

Andronicus (1978) describes the fresco in the following terms:

The barely visible painting depicts three hunters with spears and five horsemen with dogs pursuing their prey, wild boars and lions. This and three other paintings discovered in the adjacent tomb are among the few extant examples of fourth-century BC Greek frescoes. (p. 72)

This emphasizes how important the discovery was for understanding…

Usually, you’ll only need block quotes for passages with more than 40 words (or four lines). The exact rules depend on the reference system you’re using, though, so be sure to check your style guide. And, when in doubt, you can always submit a document for proofreading . We can help make sure your quotations are fully integrated into the rest of your text.

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Posted on Mar 29, 2019

170 Writing Quotes by Famous Authors for Every Occasion

When you're feeling stuck on your novel, an important thing to remember is that we've all been there in the past. That's right — even the J.K Rowling's and Ernest Hemingway's of this world. Which is why it's always a great idea to turn to your most famous peers (and their writing quotes) for inspiration.

Without further ado, here are 170 writing quotes  to guide you through every stage of writing. ( Yes! We've added more since we first published this post! )

The number one piece of advice that most authors have for other authors is to read, read, read. Here’s why.

1. “If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools ) to write. Simple as that.” — Stephen King

2. “You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” — Annie Proulx

3. “Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.” — Eudora Welty

4. “Read, read, read. Read everything  —  trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.” — William Faulkner

5. “I kept always two books in my pocket: one to read, one to write in.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

6. “The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.” — Ernest Gaines

7. “The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.” — Samuel Johnson

8. “Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.” ― Lisa See

9. “One sure window into a person’s soul is his reading list.” — Mary B. W. Tabor

The well of inspiration, we’re afraid, often does run dry. Here are the writing quotes to replenish it and, hopefully, remind you that there might be a story idea waiting for you just around the corner of life.

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10. "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." — Toni Morrison

11. “Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” — Orson Scott

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

13. “Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.” — Mark Twain

14. “When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” — George Orwell

15. “Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.” — Natalie Goldberg

16. “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” — Madeleine L'Engle

17. “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” — Henry David Thoreau

18. “Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.” — William S. Burroughs

19. “Write what should not be forgotten.” — Isabel Allende

20. “The story must strike a nerve in me. My heart should start pounding when I hear the first line in my head. I start trembling at the risk.” — Susan Sontag

21. “Sometimes the ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It’s a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works. I like a mystery, as you may have noticed.” — J.K. Rowling

22. “As for ‘Write what you know,’ I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

23. “I’m very lucky in that I don’t understand the world yet. If I understood the world, it would be harder for me to write these books.” — Mo Willems

24. “Ideas are cheap. It’s the execution that is all important.” — George R.R. Martin

25. “If you wait for inspiration to write you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.” — Dan Poynter

Now, finding your "voice" is not as simple as entering a nationally-televised competition on NBC ( nyuk nyuk! ). Yet your voice will define you as a writer, and these famous writers have plenty of tips and writing quotes for you when it comes to finding it.

Which famous author do you write like?

Find out which literary luminary is your stylistic soulmate. Takes one minute!

26. “To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.” — Allen Ginsberg

27. “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” — Jack Kerouac

28. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” —Robert Frost

29. “It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.” — P.D. James

30. “Voice is not just the result of a single sentence or paragraph or page. It’s not even the sum total of a whole story. It’s all your work laid out across the table like the bones and fossils of an unidentified carcass.” — Chuck Wendig

31. “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.” — Elmore Leonard

32. “Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul.” — Meg Rosoff

33. “I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

34. “Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.” — Virginia Woolf

35. “Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.” — Flannery O’Connor

36. “There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn’t because the book is not there and worth being written — it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and, if you fail to find that form, the story will not tell itself.” — Mark Twain

37. “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” — Louis L’Amour

38. “First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him.” — Ray Bradbury

39. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” — Ernest Hemingway

40. “Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself.” — Mark Twain

41. “Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of job: It’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.” — Neil Gaiman

42. “It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.” — Ernest Hemingway

43. “It doesn’t matter how many book ideas you have if you can’t finish writing your book.” — Joe Bunting

44. “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” — Margaret Atwood

45. “A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.” — Sidney Sheldon

46. “I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on until I am.” — Jane Austen

47. "Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." — William Faulkner

48. “One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing — writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.” — Lawrence Block

49. “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

50. “You can fix anything but a blank page.” — Nora Roberts

51. “I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” — Pearl S. Buck

52. “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed.” — Ernest Hemingway

Don’t get discouraged if you get this far and you’re thinking that your first draft is rather poor. These writing quotes are reminders that it’s just part of the process.

53. “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” — Terry Pratchett

54. “Get through a draft as quickly as possible.” — Joshua Wolf Shenk

55. “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” — Douglas Adams

56. “The first draft of everything is shit.” — Ernest Hemingway

57. “There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” — Frank Herbert

58. “I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them — without a thought about publication — and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.” — Anne Tyler

59. “I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts, so it doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever, because there’s a 90 percent chance I’m just going to delete whatever I write anyway. I find this hugely liberating.” — John Green

60. “Be willing to write really badly.” — Jennifer Egan

61. “On first drafts: It is completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut — it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts.” — Stephen King

62. “I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.” — Tom Clancy

63. “Anyone who says writing is easy isn’t doing it right.” — Amy Joy

64. “You fail only if you stop writing.” — Ray Bradbury

65. “If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.” — Isaac Asimov

66. “Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.” — Ray Bradbury

67. “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

68. “I believe myself that a good writer doesn’t really need to be told anything except to keep at it.” — Chinua Achebe

69. “The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.” — Augusten Burroughs

70. “It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.” — Gerald Brenan

71. “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” — James Baldwin

72. “You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless — there is only one thing to do with a novel and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.” — Ernest Hemingway

73. “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” — Kurt Vonnegut

74. “The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying ‘Faire et se taire’ from Flaubert. Which I translate for myself as ‘Shut up and get on with it.’” — Helen Simpson

75. “I’ve been writing since I was six. It is a compulsion, so I can’t really say where the desire came from; I’ve always had it. My breakthrough with the first book came through persistence, because a lot of publishers turned it down.” — J.K. Rowling

76. “Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer.” — Ray Bradbury

77. “It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.” — Virginia Woolf

78. “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” — Richard Bach

“Write drunk, edit sober” might be one of the most famous writing quotes about editing, but we can’t all outdrink Ernest Hemingway. Which is why these other words of wisdom and writing quotes exist!

79. “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” ― Jodi Picoult

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80. “When your story is ready for a rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” — Stephen King

81. “The best advice on writing was given to me by my first editor, Michael Korda, of Simon and Schuster, while writing my first book. 'Finish your first draft and then we'll talk,' he said. It took me a long time to realize how good the advice was. Even if you write it wrong, write and finish your first draft. Only then, when you have a flawed whole, do you know what you have to fix.” — Dominick Dunne

82. “Editing might be a bloody trade, but knives aren’t the exclusive property of butchers. Surgeons use them too.” — Blake Morrison

83. “The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.” — E.B. White

84. “You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you, and we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.” — Arthur Plotnik

85. “Half my life is an act of revision.” — John Irving

86. “I'm all for the scissors. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.” — Truman Capote

87. “It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.” — C. J. Cherryh

88. “I've found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it.” ― Don Roff

89. “Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we'.” — Mark Twain

90. “So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” ― Dr. Seuss

91. “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” — Henry David Thoreau

92. “I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times — once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say. Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one's fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.” — Bernard Malamud

93. “No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.” — Russell Lynes

94. “Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.” — Annie Dillard

95. “No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.” — H.G. Wells

96. “A writer is a world trapped in a person.” — Victor Hugo

97. “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” — Thomas Mann

98. “People say, ‘What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?’ I say, they don’t really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they’re gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.” — R.L. Stine

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

100. “I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.” — Gustave Flaubert

101. “Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.” — Sylvia Plath

102. “I go out to my little office, where I’ve got a manuscript, and the last page I was happy with is on top. I read that, and it’s like getting on a taxiway. I’m able to go through and revise it and put myself — click — back into that world.” — Stephen King

103. “I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.” — William Carlos Williams

104. “Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.” — Gore Vidal

105. “For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.” — Catherine Drinker Bowen

106. “The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.” — Thomas Mann

107. “Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.” — T.S. Eliot

108. “Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.” — Margaret Chittenden

109. “A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.” — Eugene Ionesco

110. “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” — Benjamin Franklin

111. “A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.” — Roald Dahl

112. “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” — Gloria Steinem

From cavemen to our modern day in the 21st-century, we have written our joys and sorrows throughout history. What compels us to write? Here’s what some of the most beloved writers we know have to say.

113. “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” — Anne Frank

114. “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” — Anais Nin

115. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou

116. “The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.” — Zadie Smith

117. “The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis.” — William Styron

118. “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.” — Robin Williams

119. “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.” — Aldous Huxley

120. “You can make anything by writing.” — C.S. Lewis

121. “Writers live twice.” —  Natalie Goldberg

122. “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” — Winston Churchill

123. “Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” — Oscar Wilde

124. “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” — Ray Bradbury

125. “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass .” ― Anton Chekhov

126. “My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.” — Anton Chekhov

127. “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” — Somerset Maugham

128. “Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” — Stephen King

129. “Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” — Mark Twain

130. “Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don’t let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won’t matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.” — Esther Freud

131. “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. [...] All they do is show you've been to college.” — Kurt Vonnegut

132. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.” — Herman Melville

133. “Write drunk, edit sober.” — Ernest Hemingway

134. “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” — Mark Twain

135. “The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.” — Neil Gaiman

136. “Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” — Jane Yolen

137. “Style means the right word. The rest matters little.” — Jules Renard

138. “My aim in constructing sentences is to make the sentence utterly easy to understand, writing what I call transparent prose. I’ve failed dreadfully if you have to read a sentence twice to figure out what I meant.” — Ken Follett

139. “And one of [the things you learn as you get older] is, you really need less… My model for this is late Beethoven. He moves so strangely and quite suddenly sometimes from place to place in his music, in the late quartets. He knows where he’s going and he just doesn’t want to waste all that time getting there… One is aware of this as one gets older. You can’t waste time.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

140. “ Part 1. I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English — it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in . Part 2. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. Part 3. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” — Mark Twain

“You miss 100% of the shots that you never take — Wayne Gretsky,” as Michael Scott once said. In tribute to this sentiment, these writing quotes help show why it’s important not to let failure or rejection get you down.

141. “You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.” — John Wooden

142. “Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil — but there is no way around them.” — Isaac Asimov

143. “Was I bitter? Absolutely. Hurt? You bet your sweet ass I was hurt. Who doesn’t feel a part of their heart break at rejection. You ask yourself every question you can think of, what, why, how come, and then your sadness turns to anger. That’s my favorite part. It drives me, feeds me, and makes one hell of a story.” — Jennifer Salaiz

144. “I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.” — Sylvia Plath

145. “I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent, he would be wise to develop a thick hide.” — Harper Lee

147. “I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I’m going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.” — James Lee Burke

148. “This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘Not at this address’. Just keep looking for the right address.” — Barbara Kingsolver

149. “To ward off a feeling of failure, she joked that she could wallpaper her bathroom with rejection slips, which she chose not to see as messages to stop, but rather as tickets to the game.” — Anita Shreve

150. “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” — Neil Gaiman

151. “The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.” — William Faulkner

152. “I think that you have to believe in your destiny; that you will succeed, you will meet a lot of rejection and it is not always a straight path, there will be detours — so enjoy the view.” — Michael York

153. “I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.” — Erica Jong

154. “I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love.” — Anita Diamant

155. “I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long.” — Louise Brown

156. “I had immediate success in the sense that I sold something right off the bat. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake and it really wasn’t. I have drawers full of — or I did have — drawers full of rejection slips.” — Fred Saberhagen

157. “An absolutely necessary part of a writer’s equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.” — Irwin Shaw

158. “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” — C. S. Lewis

Why does writing matter? If there’s anyone who might know the answer, it’s the people who write — and continue to write, despite adverse circumstances. Here are a few pennies for their thoughts.

159. “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.” — Virginia Woolf

160. “If the book is true, it will find an audience that is meant to read it.” — Wally Lamb

161. “A word after a word after a word is power.” — Margaret Atwood

162. “If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” — Martin Luther

163. “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” — Albert Camus

164. “Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” — David Foster Wallace

165. “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” — Philip Pullman

166. “All stories have to at least try to explain some small portion of the meaning of life.” — Gene Weingarten

167. “If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.” — Peter Handke

168. “The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.” — Tom Clancy

169. “If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.” — Lillian Hellman

170. “Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.” — Lev Grossman

Of course, writing quotes by themselves won't write the book for you — you alone have that power. However, we hope that this post has helped inspire you in some way! If you're looking for more in-depth resources, you can check out these guides:

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• How to Develop a Strong Theme
• How to Build a Character Profile
• How to Become a Better Writer Today

Have a favorite quote that we missed? If you know of more cool quotes by writers, write them in the comments!

2 responses

Brian Welte says:

08/05/2019 – 12:28

Here's a quote I absolutely adore: "The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere" [Quote from Gustave Flaubert]

Comments are currently closed.

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Quote Analysis— The Easy Way!

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 Ways to introduce quotes

When (event in book) happened, (character) states, "..."

Ex: When Lady Macbeth kills herself, Macbeth states, "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more (V.V.19-20).

(Character) explains: "..." (citation).

(Your own words) "direct quotes from book" ...

Ex: Macbeth pines over his miserable fate, calling life a "walking shadow" (citation).

Ways to paraphrase

Directly look at quote and replace the text with your words. It is vitally important to maintain the same meaning:

Ex: In other words, Macbeth compares his existence to the condition of being a mere ghost. He goes on to compare people to actors who worry about their brief moment in the spotlight only to cease to exist before he realizes his life is over.

Ways to analyze

Look at the subtle parts of the quote, and explain why the author used them in his writing--Tone, diction, mood, figurative language (metaphors, similes, imagery, alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification...there are A LOT).

Ex: The metaphors Shakespeare uses, comparing life to a "walking shadow" and man to "a poor player" emphasize the fleeting nature of life. Shadows are gone as soon as they appear, and actors only assume their character: the people they represent have no true meaning.

Ways to evaluate

Show the importance of the quote with respect to your argument and your thesis. Explain the significance...Tell the reader why they bothered to read your essay. This is where you tie your thoughts together in a nice bow.

Ex: Here, Macbeth realizes that his pitiful existence, from the moment he decided to kill King Duncan to the moment when his beloved wife killed herself, has been consumed by his reckless ambition. This directly shows the damaging power of ambition. If Macbeth had been content with his previous title, which was prestigious enough, a host of tragedy would have been avoided.

When Lady Macbeth kills herself, Macbeth states, "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more" (V.V.19-28). In other words, Macbeth compares his existence to the condition of being a mere ghost. He goes on to compare people to actors who worry about their brief moment in the spotlight only to cease to exist before they realize it is over. The metaphors Shakespeare uses, comparing life to a "walking shadow" and man to "a poor player" emphasize the fleeting nature of life. Shadows are gone as soon as they appear, and actors only assume their character: the people they represent have no true meaning. Here, Macbeth realizes that his pitiful existence, from the moment he decided to kill King Duncan to the moment when his beloved wife killed herself, has been destroyed by his reckless ambition. This directly shows the damaging power of ambition, a major theme of the play. If Macbeth had been content with his previous title, which was prestigious enough, a wealth of tragedy would have been avoided.

Write your thesis here for reference:

1. Write the quote here, with a way to introduce it:

2. Write a paraphrase here (remember to keep the same meaning):

3. Write your analysis here (look for the subtle, key parts of the quote):

4. Write your evaluation here (prove why the quote is important in relation to your thesis):

5. Repeat for the rest of your text-based essay!!!

Sarah Cohen

Student Learning Center, University of California, Berkeley

©2009 UC Regents

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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50 Inspirational Quotes on Writing

By barnes & noble press /, january 4, 2021 at 3:00 pm.

It’s a new year and, therefore, we want to help kick it off right with a collection of our favorite inspirational quotes on writing! We always start a new year with resolutions, but often it’s hard to stick with our goals. Certainly, that’s where we can come in 🙂

Above all, we hope these 50 Inspirational Quotes on Writing will keep you motivated and energized throughout 2021.

Inspirational Quotes on Writing: Imagination

2. “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” –  William Wordsworth

3. “The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

4. “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” –  Joan Didion

5. “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream by night.” – Edgar Allan Poe

6. “The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” –  Gustav Flaubert

7. “I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and look at it, until it shines.” –  Emily Dickinson

8. “That’s what you’re looking for as a writer when you’re working. You’re looking for your own freedom.” –  Philip Roth

9. “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” –  George Bernard Shaw

10. “Creativity is a combination of discipline and childlike spirit.” –  Robert Greene

11. “Writing is the painting of the voice.” –  Voltaire

12. “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” –  Paulo Coelho

13. “I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere and it can do anything.” –  Alice Walker

Inspirational Quotes on Writing: Motivation

14. “Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself… it’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless.” – Harper Lee

15. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” –  Henry David Thoreau

16. “There are significant moments in everyone’s day that can make literature. That’s what you ought to write about.” –  Raymond Carver

17. “Keep asking questions because people will always want to know the answer. Open with a question and don’t answer it until the end.” –  Lee Child

18. “But when people say, did you always want to be a writer? I have to say no! I always was a write.” –  Ursula K. Le Guin

19. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” –  Maya Angelou

20. “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” –  Margaret Atwood

21. “You should write stories because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page.” –  Annie Proulx

23. “If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart.” –  Terry Brooks

24. “If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it.” –  H.G. Wells

25. “Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” –  Tom Stoppard

26. “The secret of it all is to write… without waiting for a fit time or place.” –  Walt Whitman

27. “No one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.” –  Charles de Lint

28. “Successful writing is one part inspiration and two parts sheer stubbornness.” –  Gillian Flynn

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

31. “If you don’t see the book you want on the shelf, write it.” – Beverly Cleary

32. “When all else fails, write what your heart tells you. You can’t depend on your eyes, when your imagination is out of focus.”  Mark Twain

33. “Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Make some light.” –  Kate DiCamillo

Inspirational Quotes on Writing: Process

34. “A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.” –  Junot Diaz

35. “The first draft is you just telling yourself the story.” –  Terry Pratchett

36. “Write a page a day. Only 300 words and in a year you have written a novel.” –  Stephen King

37. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” –  Agatha Christie

38. “The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.” –  Donna Tart

39. “Writing is an act of faith, not a grammar trick.” –  E.B. White

40. “Good stories are not written. They are rewritten.” –  Phyllis Whitney

41. “The first draft is a skeleton. Just bare bones. The rest of the story comes later with revising.” –  Judy Bloom

42. “When you are describing a shape, or sound, or tint, don’t state the matter plainly, but put it in a hint. And learn to look at all things with a sort of mental squint.” –  Lewis Carroll

43. “You may not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” – Jodi Picoult

44. “Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.” –  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

45. “The secret to editing your work is simple: You need to become its reader instead of its writer.” –  Zadie Smith

46. “I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” –  Shannon Hale

47. “Don’t labor over a little cameo work 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

48. “If you fall in love with the vision and not your words, the rewriting will become easier.” –  Nora DeLoach

49. “Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff clears the way for good, or forms a base on which to build something better.” –  Jennifer Egan

50. “Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.” –  Ray Bradbury

To sum up, write it all down this year. After that, visit BNPress.com to become a published author! Importantly, we have plenty of tools to help new authors. From trusted partners to assist with editing, formatting, or design, to marketing and promotions. Each step of the way, we will be there to help.

And check out more from the B&N Press Blog:

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30 Best Quotes for Essay Writing

December 10, 2023 by Sandeep

The essay is an independent, educational, and scientific student research. In writing this paper, students master the methods and gain the ability to conduct research. In addition, essay writing helps form the student’s creative thinking, test the skills of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting literature, and formulate conclusions and suggestions.

Successful essay writing depends on strict adherence to the basic requirements. These requirements relate primarily to the scientific level of the work, its content, structure, form of presentation of the material, and design. The teacher may not accept works in violation of state standards and established requirements. Inconsistencies in the design can significantly affect the final evaluation of the work. The student’s compliance with all the requirements for writing and design of the essay instills certain skills in conducting research, which will be useful in creating other types of papers.

All of the above points are important to gain the ability to complete an essay. However, this is not an as simple type of student paper as it may seem at first glance. Students often have difficulty in both essay writing and designing. Fortunately, today everyone can find someone to write a paper online. It is only necessary to pay the set price. The best writers work for an online company DoMyEssay. To get their help, you should visit the site and request, “Please, do an essay for me.” The high quality and reliability of writing services are guaranteed for everyone.

Requirements for Quotes & References in Essay Writing

A compulsory component of any scientific work is a scientific citation. It is essential to cite the source from which the materials or individual results are borrowed or the ideas and conclusions based on which the problems, tasks, issues to which the work is devoted are developed. Such links make it possible to find relevant sources, check the accuracy of citations, obtain the necessary information about these sources.

The use of references in essays is mandatory and is used in the following cases:

• When quoting fragments of text, formulas, tables, illustrations;
• When paraphrasing, non-verbal reproduction of a fragment of another’s text;
• When analyzing the content of other publications in the text;
• When referring to other publications where the material to be discussed is more complete.

The absence of a link is a copyright infringement, and an incorrect link is considered a serious error. All sources cited in the list of references must be indicated in the text of the paper.

Importance of Correct Citation in Student Papers

The importance of citation is in the need to demonstrate the breadth of research and interest in the publications of other authors, to confirm own arguments with statements from other sources. Text borrowed from other sources is used for this purpose.

Here are three main functions that quotes perform in essay writing :

• Places your work in context, creates dialogue;
• Pay tribute to the previous work that formed the basis of your research;
• Maintains the authenticity and accuracy of scientific literature.

List of Helpful Quotes You Can Use in Your Essay Writing

Below is a list of 30 quotes you can use in your essay writing:

• The simplest example is more convincing than the most eloquent sermon (Lucius Annec Seneca);
• It is not people who need rules, but rules need people (S. Dube);
• The one who is no longer able to serve as anything serves as a good example (Andre Siegfried);
• Take an example from your elders, while they behave approximately (Jerzy Leszczynski);
• The need to set a good example for your children robs middle-aged people of all pleasure (William Feder);
• Remember: sooner or later, your son will follow your example and not your advice (Pierre Corneille);
• An example is stronger than a threat (Pierre Corneille);
• Bad examples are stronger than good rules (Joey Locke);
• You only have one life. You have to live it as fully as possible (Jojo Moyes);
• When life is good, there is no need to argue about it (Ray Bradbury);
• There are moments in life that change us once and for all (Jeffrey Deaver);
• The reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The person who never reads experiences only one (George Martin);
• On our path in life, we will meet everyone who is destined to meet us (Charles Dickens);
• What is the sense of life? Serve others and do good (Aristotle);
• Those who illuminate the lives of others will not be left without light themselves (James Matthew Barry);
• In general, I live without hesitation, so I always have fun (Francis Scott Fitzgerald);
• An example is always more powerful than a sermon (Samuel Johnson);
• When it comes to budget, everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die (Jean Chrétien);
• Violating our duty, thereby we violate our rights (Jean-Jacques Rousseau);
• You cannot talk about the budget without knowing approximately the figures of its income and expenses (Theodor Herzl);
• Civilization road paved with tax receipts (Andrew McKenzie);
• If you know how to spend less than you get, then you have the Philosopher’s Stone (Benjamin Franklin);
• Only two incentives make people work: the thirst for wages and the fear of losing them (Henry Ford);
• There is no perfection in the world (Antoine de Saint-Exupery);
• You are forever responsible for the one you tamed (Antoine de Saint-Exupery);
• It’s good where we are not (Antoine de Saint-Exupery);
• All adults were children at first, only a few of them remember this (Antoine de Saint-Exupery);
• Live and learn (Lucius Annec Seneca);
• The end justifies the means (Ignatius de Loyola);
• Truth is in wine (Pliny the Elder).

How To Write a Compare-And-Contrast Essay?

• Smodin Editorial Team
• Updated: May 6, 2024

Are you tasked with writing a compare-and-contrast essay but not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered! Today, we’ll discuss everything you need to know to make the grade.

A compare-and-contrast essay is a form of academic writing that requires you to examine the similarities and differences between two subjects.

Compare-and-contrast essays can take many forms, and the subject matter can range from books to people to historical events or even abstract concepts and theories.

Regardless of the topic, the key to any successful compare-and-contrast essay lies in your ability to articulate your thesis and highlight the parallels between the two subjects clearly and concisely.

But to get a good grade, you need more than a good concept; you need the writing to support it.

Many students face a challenge when writing a compare-and-contrast essay because their pieces aren’t memorable and engaging compared to other submissions.

Thankfully, we’re here to help. Today, we’ll provide some tips and tricks to help your essay stand out. We’ll also show you how to expedite the process using AI tools to enhance your essay’s thesis, structure, and overall delivery.

Ready to dive in?

Overview of Compare-And-Contrast Essays

Like most academic writing, compare-and-contrast essays require a clear thesis and thorough analysis of the subject matter. What sets these essays apart is their dual focus on two distinct subjects.

Since this unique approach can be challenging for some writers to master, let’s start with a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know.

What Is the Essay Supposed To Accomplish?

When writing a compare-and-contrast essay, you aim to establish the relationship between two subjects through critical analysis. Your thesis should provide new insight into the relationship between these two ideas.

The biggest mistake many students make is that they simply outline the similarities and differences without centering their writing around a clear and unique thesis statement.

You need to present your thesis in the opening paragraph and use it to enhance the reader’s understanding of the subjects. The goal is to showcase your ability to articulate the complexities and nuances between the two subjects.

How Subjects Impact Your Thesis

The subjects you choose to compare and contrast significantly influence the direction and scope of your thesis. These subjects will also directly affect the complexity and difficulty of the essay itself.

For example, selecting two vastly different subjects can highlight striking contrasts but may be extremely challenging to write about. The last thing you want to do is get halfway through your essay and realize you’ve hit a wall.

Oppositely, picking closely related topics can make the writing process more manageable, but you risk producing an average paper that does little to stand out.

Ideally, strive for a balance between the two. This will ensure your essay remains engaging and insightful while still being feasible to research and write effectively.

How To Organize Your Essay

There are several ways to organize a compare-and-contrast essay, depending on how deep you want to go with your analysis and how complex your subject matter is.

Generally speaking, you want to structure your essay in one of two ways.

The Point-by-Point Method

In this method, you discuss one specific aspect or criterion of both subjects at the time. For example, if you’re comparing two fiction novels, you may devote the first paragraph of your essay to the theme, then the next to character development, and so on.

This method provides direct comparisons at each point of your analysis. This, in turn, makes it easier for the reader to see the similarities and differences because they are directly juxtaposed against each other.

Block Method or Subject-By-Subject Method

In this approach, you dedicate one entire section — or block — of your essay to each subject. Using the same example above, you would first discuss all the relevant points and aspects of the first subject in block one, then do the same with the other subject in block two.

This method is best for dealing with many distinct and nuanced topics. It allows you to focus on each subject individually without going through a constant back-and-forth.

The drawback is that it requires thoughtful transitions to help the reader understand how the subjects relate since all points are not directly compared throughout the essay.

Both organizational methods have their advantages, and one isn’t necessarily better than the other.

As long as the process aligns with your thesis and helps highlight the similarities and differences you intend to explore, you should be well on your way.

How Much Space Should You Devote to Each Topic

At first glance, it may seem obvious that you should devote equal space to each topic, but that isn’t always true.

That isn’t to say that you should devote 80% to one subject and 20% to the other, but sometimes striking the right balance requires a bit of imbalance .

Consider the depth and complexity of each topic and outline the points you need to cover. Some subjects might naturally require more time and space to explain the more intricate details. If that’s the case, feel free to devote more analysis to one topic as long as it doesn’t detract from the other.

You’ll be fine if you utilize transitional phrases and connecting sentences to help maintain symmetry. Always provide clear and compelling comparisons supporting your thesis and guide your reader through your logical and informed argument.

Why Revision Is Essential

While writing your compare-and-contrast essay, you will encounter content that won’t actually make it into your essay.

The research process can result in information overload, and with all this information floating around in your head, it may be challenging to see things like an outside reader would.

Revising your essay after a prolonged break is always a good idea. This will ensure that all your comparisons and contrasts are presented logically and clearly.

It also allows you time to refine your thesis, strengthen your arguments, and ensure your essay flows as well on paper as it does in your mind.

Tips for Writing Compare-And-Contrast Essays

Now that you understand the basics of a compare-and-contrast essay, let’s examine some strategies that can help elevate your writing and make it stand out.

1. Choose Strong Topics

No matter how good your writing may be, it will do little good if you have nothing to write about. Do your research and select rich topics that give you plenty to cover. The best concepts should wow your reader, just from the title alone.

Of course, the research process can take time, especially when you’re reading dense scholarly articles. If you want to quickly grasp the main points of lengthy articles, book excerpts, or any other piece of writing, look at Smodin’s AI Summarizer.

With this tool, you can save time and energy on reading and instead focus on analyzing the material.

2. Use Critical Analysis and Create an Outline

In academic settings, it can be challenging to be original. If you’re in an undergraduate setting, you’re probably used to elementary, surface-level observations on topics.

As you advance your education, critical analysis becomes crucial. Understanding the more profound implications, historical contexts, and underlying themes is necessary for success.

Critical analysis is a great way to stand out regardless of your education level. Smodin’s essay writer can help you create an outline within seconds, allowing you to explore multiple possibilities simultaneously.

Then, you can choose an outline that offers a compelling, thought-provoking analysis and allows Smodin to work its magic in creating an essay that will wow any reader.

3. Use Varied Language and Syntax

Even if your topic is thought-provoking and original, it must still be readable. Avoid monotonous writing by varying sentence structure and vocabulary as much as possible. You don’t want to consult a thesaurus for every sentence, but you do want to keep things fresh.

Smodin’s AI Rewriter is perfect for refining your drafts and improving the clarity and readability of your essay. This is especially useful when fine-tuning a compare-and-contrast essay where clear and distinct language is essential for bouncing between two subjects.

The AI Rewriter can also assist in paraphrasing text, providing alternative ways to express the same ideas with new vocabulary and different sentence constructions. This helps prevent repetitive phrasing and enhances the overall variety of your essay.

4. Use Direct Quotes When Possible

Using direct quotes in an essay is often a balancing act. Use too many, and your essay can become cluttered and lose its original voice. Use too few, and you miss an opportunity to nail down your arguments with an outside, authoritative voice.

As with all things related to writing, the answer lies in balance. If you ensure each quote is relevant to the thesis and effectively integrate them into your essay, your argument can be elevated to the next level.

Remember that citing each quote is crucial to maintaining academic integrity. To ensure that your essay complies with academic standards, use the Smodin Plagiarism Checker .

Not only does this tool help ensure that all quotes are accurately cited, but it also gives you peace of mind that your own narrative remains intact and your writing is free from unintentional plagiarism.

5. Nail down Your Argument in the Conclusion

Students sometimes forget that their teachers and professors read dozens — and sometimes hundreds — of essays on the same subject. Your goal as a writer should always be to make reading your essay as simple as possible.

A well-crafted conclusion helps you reiterate and reinforce your thesis, making sure it stands out in the reader’s mind. The end of your essay is your chance to synthesize the arguments presented in your essay to emphasize the insights gained through your comparison.

Before submitting your essay, consider using Smodin’s AI Chat feature for preliminary feedback. While it cannot predict your grader’s bias, it can provide enough critical insight to assess the persuasiveness of your argument.

Incorporate the chat’s feedback and then fine-tune your conclusion to ensure that it reiterates your opening thesis and elucidates any new findings you presented along the way.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: what are practical ways to choose topics for a compare-and-contrast essay.

When choosing topics for a compare-and-contrast essay, look for subjects with enough in common to be compared but different enough to allow for a meaningful discussion. Also, pick topics from the same category, such as two novels, two historical events, or two theories.

Q: Can I Combine the Point-By-Point and Block Methods?

While it’s generally best to stick to one organizational structure, writers can sometimes successfully combine both methods. For example, the block method can provide a detailed overview of each subject, and then the point-by-point method can be applied to make specific comparisons of crucial aspects.

Q: What Is the Best Way To Integrate Direct Quotes Without Disrupting the Flow of My Essay?

Introducing each quote with a bit of analysis or explanation can help set the context for your quote. Follow up the quote with further interpretation and link it to your main argument. Keep the quotes concise to enhance your narrative instead of detracting from it.

Q: How Often Should I Use Smodin’s AI Chat Feature for Feedback During Writing?

As often as you like! The great thing about AI tools like Smodin is they never get tired. Use it after completing your drafts and before final revisions to ensure your essay’s structure and arguments are clear and compelling.

Mastering the art of the compare-and-contrast essay is mainly dependent on critical thinking. By carefully selecting your topics, organizing your arguments clearly, and utilizing tools like Smodin’s AI, you can enhance the quality and impact of your essays.

Remember, the goal is not just to fulfill an assignment but to craft a piece that stands out in its insight and clarity. With the strategies and tools discussed, you’re well-equipped to create essays that meet and exceed expectations.

Utilize these techniques and leverage the power of AI to elevate your essays to the next level!

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Guest Essay

Saying Goodbye to My Brilliant Friend, the Poetry Critic Helen Vendler

By Roger Rosenblatt

The author, most recently, of “Cataract Blues: Running the Keyboard.”

One makes so few new friends in older age — I mean, real friends, the ones you bond with and hold dear, as if you’d known one another since childhood.

Old age often prevents, or at least tempers, such discoveries. The joy of suddenly finding someone of compatible tastes, politics, intellectual interests and sense of humor can be shadowed, if tacitly, by the inevitable prospect of loss.

I became friends with Helen Vendler — the legendary poetry critic who died last week — six years ago, after she came to a talk I gave at Harvard about my 1965-66 Fulbright year in Ireland. Our friendship was close at the outset and was fortified and deepened by many letters between us, by our writing.

Some critics gain notice by something new they discover in the literature they examine. Helen became the most important critic of the age by dealing with something old and basic — the fact that great poetry was, well, lovable. Her vast knowledge of it was not like anyone else’s, and she embraced the poets she admired with informed exuberance.

The evening we met, Helen and I huddled together for an hour, maybe two, speaking of the great Celtic scholar John Kelleher, under whom we had both studied; of Irish poetry; and of our families. Helen was born to cruelly restrictive Irish Catholic parents who would not think of her going to anything but a Catholic college. When Helen rebelled against them, she was effectively tossed out and never allowed to return home.

She told me all this at our very first meeting. And I told her the sorrows of my own life — the untimely death of my daughter, Amy, and the seven-plus years my wife, Ginny, and I spent helping to rear her three children. And I told Helen unhappy things about my own upbringing. The loneliness. I think we both sensed that we had found someone we could trust with our lives.

I never asked Helen why she had come to my talk in the first place, though I had recognized her immediately. After spending a life with English and American poetry — especially the poetry of Wallace Stevens — how could I not? The alert tilt of her head, the two parenthetical lines around the mouth that always seemed on the verge of saying something meaningful and the sad-kind-wise eyes of the most significant literary figure since Edmund Wilson.

And unlike Wilson, Helen was never compelled to show off. She knew as much about American writing as Wilson, and, I believe, loved it more.

It was that, even more than the breadth and depth of her learning, that set her apart. She was a poet who didn’t write poetry, but felt it like a poet, and thus knew the art form to the core of her being. Her method of “close reading,” studying a poem intently word by word, was her way of writing it in reverse.

Weeks before Helen’s death and what would have been her 91st birthday, we exchanged letters. I had sent her an essay I’d just written on the beauty of wonder, stemming from the wonder so many people felt upon viewing the total solar eclipse earlier this month. I often sent Helen things I wrote. Some she liked less than others, and she was never shy to say so. She liked the essay on wonder, though she said she was never a wonderer herself, but a “hopeless pragmatist,” not subject to miracles, except upon two occasions. One was the birth of her son, David, whom she mentioned in letters often. She loved David deeply, and both were happy when she moved from epic Cambridge to lyrical Laguna Niguel, Calif., to be near him, as she grew infirm.

Her second miracle, coincidentally, occurred when Seamus Heaney drove her to see a solar eclipse at Tintern Abbey. There, among the Welsh ruins, Helen had an astonishing experience, one that she described to me in a way that seemed almost to evoke Wordsworth:

I had of course read descriptions of the phenomena of a total eclipse, but no words could equal the total-body/total landscape effect; the ceasing of bird song; the inexorability of the dimming to a crescent and then to a corona; the total silence; the gradual salience of the stars; the iciness of the silhouette of the towers; the looming terror of the steely eclipse of all of nature. Now that quelled utterly any purely “scientific” interest. One became pure animal, only animal, no “thought-process” being even conceivable.

One who claims not to know wonders shows herself to be one.

She was so intent on the beauty of the poets she understood so deeply, she never could see why others found her appreciations remarkable. Once, when I sent her a note complimenting her on a wonderfully original observation she’d made in a recent article, she wrote: “So kind of you to encourage me. I always feel that everything I say would be obvious to anyone who can read, so am always amazed when someone praises something.”

Only an innocent of the highest order would say such a beautiful, preposterous thing. When recently the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her the Gold Medal for Belle Lettres and Criticism, Helen was shocked.

“You could have floored me when I got the call,” she wrote to me, adding: “Perhaps I was chosen by the committee because of my advanced age; if so, I can’t complain. The quote that came to mind was Lowell’s ‘My head grizzled with the years’ gold garbage.’”

She was always doing that — attaching a quotation from poetry to a thought or experience of her own, as if she occupied the same room as all the great poets, living with them as closely as loved ones in a tenement.

Shelley called poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” I never fully got that famous line. But if the legislators’ laws apply to feeling and conduct, I think he was onto something. If one reads poetry — ancient and modern — as deeply as Helen did, and stays with it, and lets it roll around in one’s head, the effect is transporting. You find yourself in a better realm of feeling and language. And nothing of the noisier outer world — not Donald Trump, not Taylor Swift — can get to you.

In our last exchange of letters, Helen told me about the death she was arranging for herself. I was brokenhearted to realize that I was losing someone who had given me and countless others so much thought and joy. Her last words to me were telling, though, and settled the matter as only practical, spiritual Helen could:

I feel not a whit sad at the fact of death, but massively sad at leaving friends behind, among whom you count dearly. I have always known what my true feelings are by whatever line of poetry rises unbidden to my mind on any occasion; to my genuine happiness, this time was a line from Herbert’s “Evensong,” in which God (always in Herbert, more like Jesus than Jehovah), says to the poet, “Henceforth repose; your work is done.”

She closed her letter as I closed my response. “Love and farewell.”

Roger Rosenblatt is the author, most recently, of “Cataract Blues: Running the Keyboard.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

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• Entertainment

Sophia Bush Reflects on Coming Out By Sharing Quote from Poet Maggie Smith: 'We Are All Nesting Dolls'

The actress confirmed her relationship with former soccer player Ashlyn Harris in a striking personal essay for 'Glamour'

Dia Dipasupil/WireImage

Sophia Bush is feeling freer than ever after coming to terms with her sexuality . 

In a candid essay for Glamour 's April cover, the actress, 41, reflected on her divorce from Grant Hughes and revealed her relationship with soccer player Ashlyn Harris . She also admitted that this year felt like her “very first birthday” as she wrote, “I finally feel like I can breathe.”

Bush continued to reflect on the striking piece on Instagram, revealing that poet Maggie Smith has inspired much of her revelations — and her thoughts on her birthday, in particular.

“I feel like last summer I had my very first birthday. My own,” Bush wrote in a post shared on April 28. “And last summer Maggie Smith’s words helped me begin to understand why. From afar, she helped me put myself back together.”

“She said: ‘How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves— all of our selves —wherever we go. Inside forty-something me is the woman I was in my thirties, the woman I was in my twenties, the teenager I was, the child I was… I still carry these versions of myself. It’s a kind of reincarnation without death: all these different lives we get to live in this one body, as ourselves,’” the One Tree Hill alum shared.

Bush continued, “This week I got to share my own words, that I wrote down from the bottom of my ever-evolving heart. When I uttered ‘I really love who I am, at this age, and in this moment’ I sort of couldn’t believe it. It just fell out of me. Simple. But profound. I’ve always wanted to feel that in my bones. Suddenly I do. It took a long time and a lot of work to get here.”

She concluded her post with a message of support to all those who have resonated with her words and her story in the days since it was published. “We are all in this together. Walking each other home. Here is to the becoming ✨.”

Paul Morigi/Getty

In the essay, Bush admitted that much of her life — including her marriage to Grant Hughes — “all came crashing down at once ” during her run on the West End’s 2:22: A Ghost Story , which she exited early due to health issues .

“It was clear that my body was screaming and I had to listen. It was hard for me to accept. I was part of a team. But I needed to go home, where my doctors (and, truthfully, my health insurance) could get a better handle on my symptoms,” she shared. “My time in London was over. So was my marriage. It all came crashing down at once.”

Now, Bush is “taking deep breaths again” and is finally feeling settled inside herself. Her relationship with Harris, 38, began in the summer of 2023 as they were both healing from separations from their respective spouses. (The former soccer player officially filed for divorce from her wife of three years, Ali Krieger , in October 2023.)

The first time Bush asked Harris to hang out sans other friends ended up being a transformative four-hour dinner that she described as one of "the most surreal experiences."

“Maybe it was all fated. Maybe it really is a version of invisible string theory. I don’t really know,” she wrote. “But I do know that for a sparkly moment I felt like maybe the universe had been conspiring for me. And that feeling that I have in my bones is one I’ll hold on to no matter where things go from here.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

Bush and Harris' relationship began last fall, and PEOPLE confirmed that October that their romantic connection was "recent" as they were "both beginning new chapters." After her Glamour essay was published, Bush made her red carpet debut with Harris at the 2024 White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, D.C. on April 27.

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Paul Auster, American author of The New York Trilogy, dies aged 77

The writer of The New York Trilogy, Leviathan and 4 3 2 1 – known for his stylised postmodernist fiction – has died from complications of lung cancer

‘A literary voice for the ages’: Paul Auster remembered by Ian McEwan, Joyce Carol Oates and more

Paul Auster – a life in quotes

Paul Auster – a life in pictures

Paul Auster, the author of 34 books including the acclaimed New York Trilogy, has died aged 77.

The author died on Tuesday due to complications from lung cancer, the Guardian has been told.

Auster became known for his “highly stylised, quirkily riddlesome postmodernist fiction in which narrators are rarely other than unreliable and the bedrock of plot is continually shifting,” the novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote in 2010.

His stories often play with themes of coincidence, chance and fate. Many of his protagonists are writers themselves, and his body of work is self-referential, with characters from early novels appearing again in later ones.

“Auster has established one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature,” wrote critic Michael Dirda in 2008. “His narrative voice is as hypnotic as that of the Ancient Mariner. Start one of his books and by page two you cannot choose but hear.”

The author was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1947. According to Auster, his writing life began at the age of eight when he missed out on getting an autograph from his baseball hero, Willie Mays, because neither he nor his parents had carried a pencil to the game. From then on, he took a pencil everywhere. “If there’s a pencil in your pocket, there’s a good chance that one day you’ll feel tempted to start using it,” he wrote in a 1995 essay .

While hiking during a summer camp aged 14, Auster witnessed a boy inches away from him getting struck by lightning and dying instantly – an event that he said “absolutely changed” his life and that he thought about “every day”. Chance, “understandably, became a recurring theme in his fiction,” wrote the critic Laura Miller in 2017. A similar incident occurs in Auster’s 2017 Booker-shortlisted novel 4 3 2 1: one of the book’s four versions of protagonist Archie Ferguson runs under a tree at a summer camp and is killed by a falling branch when lightning strikes.

Auster studied at Columbia University before moving to Paris in the early 1970s, where he worked a variety of jobs, including translation, and lived with his “on-again off-again” girlfriend, the writer Lydia Davis, whom he had met while at college. In 1974, they returned to the US and married. In 1977, the couple had a son, Daniel, but separated shortly afterwards.

In January 1979, Auster’s father, Samuel, died, and the event became the seed for the writer’s first memoir, The Invention of Solitude, published in 1982. In it, Auster revealed that his paternal grandfather was shot and killed by his grandmother, who was acquitted on grounds of insanity. “A boy cannot live through this kind of thing without being affected by it as a man,” Auster wrote in reference to his father, with whom he described himself having an “un-movable relationship, cut off from each other on opposite sides of a wall”.

Auster’s breakthrough came with the 1985 publication of City of Glass, the first novel in his New York trilogy. While the books are ostensibly mystery stories, Auster wielded the form to ask existential questions about identity. “The more [Auster’s detectives] stalk their eccentric quarry, the more they seem actually to be stalking the Big Questions – the implications of authorship, the enigmas of epistemology, the veils and masks of language,” wrote the critic and screenwriter Stephen Schiff in 1987.

Auster published regularly throughout the 80s, 90s and 00s, writing more than a dozen novels including Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002) and Oracle Night (2003). He also became involved in film, writing the screenplay for Smoke, directed by Wayne Wang, for which he won the Independent Spirit award for best first screenplay in 1995.

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In 1981, Auster met the writer Siri Hustvedt and they married the following year. In 1987 they had a daughter, Sophie, who became a singer and actor. Auster’s 1992 novel Leviathan, about a man who accidentally blows himself up, features a character called Iris Vegan, who is the heroine of Hustvedt’s first novel, The Blindfold.

Auster was better known in Europe than in his native United States: “Merely a bestselling author in these parts,” read a 2007 New York magazine article , “Auster is a rock star in Paris.” In 2006, he was awarded Spain’s Prince of Asturias prize for literature, and in 1993 he was given the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan. He was also a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

In April 2022, Auster and Davis’s son, Daniel, died from a drug overdose. In March 2023, Hustvedt revealed that Auster was being treated for cancer after having been diagnosed the previous December. His final novel, Baumgartner, about a widowed septuagenarian writer, was published in October.

Auster is survived by Hustvedt, their daughter Sophie Auster, his sister Janet Auster, and a grandson.

• Paul Auster

More on this story

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‘I remember Paul Auster’: a tribute by Jonathan Lethem to his friend

‘Getting a book idea feels like a buzz in the head’: Paul Auster – a life in quotes

Brooklyn’s bard: Paul Auster’s tricksy fiction captivated a generation

‘This might be the last thing I ever write’: Paul Auster on cancer, connection and the fallacy of closure

Paul Auster: ‘The gun that killed my grandfather was the same gun that ruined my father’s life’

Baumgartner by Paul Auster review – love, ageing and loss

Paul Auster: ‘It’s distress that generates art’

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