There are many female writers who amaze me, not just with their writing, but how wisdom plays a role in who they are, and why they write. These are a few memorable quotes I think apropos for writing from the heart.

“Writing is a job, a talent, but it’s also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.” ~~Ann Patchett

“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes”. ~~Agatha Christie

“Cram you head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you’re working. Tell them it’s research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.” Jennifer Weiner

“Write about the emotions you fear the most.” ~~Laurie Halse Anderson

“Perhaps it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself, ‘WHY?’ afterward than before. Anyway, the force of somewhere in space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up a pen when you’re told, and what is commanded.” ~~Zora Neal Hurston

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

“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

“Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.” ~~Alice Walker

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

“Writing is really a way of thinking—not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic, or just sweet.” ~~Toni Morrison

“Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. . . (Write) knowing in part no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.” ~~Edwidge Danticat

“I am a person who thinks about the nature of the spirit when I write. I think about what can’t be known and only imagined. I often sense a spirit or force or meaning beyond myself. I leave it open as to what the spirit is, but I continue to make guesses.” ~~Amy Tan

“I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.” ~~Arundhati Roy

“A word after a word after a word is power.” ~~Margaret Atwood

“Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.” ~~Isabel Allende