Louis L’Amour was one of America’s most prolific writers. In this article, we will explore his thoughts and advice on writing. His quotes explore different questions that touch on different aspects of a writer’s life such as:
- Why do writers write?
- Should you write for money?
- How do you become a good writer?
- How does self-education shape you as a writer?
The quotes below are taken mainly from his autobiography, Education of a Wandering Man, which chronicles his colorful life but is also packed with great advice for aspiring writers.
If you want to learn more about Louis L’Amour, check out his quick biography.
Quotes on Reasons for Writing
1. When at the typewriter I am no longer where I site but am away across the mountains, in ancient cities or on the Great Plains among the buffalo. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
2. Writing can be fun, and so it has been for me. Once I was established to the point that editors were asking me for stories, I found I could explore in many directions just so far as I did not forget what people wished to read. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
3. Often I think of what pitiful fools are those who use mind-altering drugs to seek feelings they do not have… Give the brain encouragement from study, from thinking, from visualizing, and no drugs are needed.” – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
4. Who remembers the millionaires of the past? Who even remembers the popular heroes? But we do remember a poor stonecutter in Athens named Socrates, a thief from the gutters of Paris named Francois Villon, an actor in London called Shakespeare, a – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
5. It is not enough to have learned, for living is sharing and I must offer what I have for whatever it is worth. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
6. Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
7. Each book I write is an adventure in itself. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
8. I often say that a writer owes a debt of authenticity to his readers. Because of his profession, he may go to the fountains of knowledge and drink as deeply as he wishes. This is not given to all people who are concerned with making a living and providing services. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
Quotes on the Writing Life
9. Somewhere back down the years I decided, or my nature decided for me, that I would be a teller of stories. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
10. My life may not be great to others, but to me it has been one of steady progression, never dull, often exciting, often hungry, tired, and lonely, but always learning. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
11. No doubt reading Martin Eden by Jack London, as well as other life stories of writers, prepared me for the rejections to come, and the difficulty I would have in getting published. Because of what I had read I knew there would be rejections, but I had no idea there would be so many. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
12. Hunger I was to experience many times, but it was reassuring to know others had survived, although most written accounts of hunger are by those who never experienced it. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
13. I do not recall ever complaining that things were not better. Often I wished they were, and often found myself wishing for some sudden windfall that would enable me to stop wandering and working and settle down to simply writing. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
14. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
Quotes on Making Money by Writing
15. Whatever else I did, I had to make a living from my writing, and that meant work and lots of it. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
16. Although I had saved a little money during the war, I knew it would not last long. To write was imperative, and not only to write but to sell. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
17. When I first began writing and was unable to sell a short story, I wrote anything I could sell for a few dollars: two-line jokes, jingles, small bits of poetry or verse, mostly nature pieces. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
18. As I wrote the stories I could sell, I was like a squirrel, gathering the nuts of future stories and storing them for the years when my writing would be better and my market larger. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
Quotes on the Love of Writing
19. Nietzsche said it best when he wrote (as I recall), “I have a song to sing and will sing it, although I am alone in an empty house and must sing to my own ears.” – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
20. Writing is not an easy profession and many go reluctantly to the desk. This has never been a problem for me. I have found many stories to tell. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
21. Often, ambitious young men or women write, wanting to work for me or assist me in my research. What they do not understand is that it is a labor of love, and I would relinquish no part of it at any price. I do not need help; I need time. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
22. I have never worked with anyone on a story and have never wanted to, nor has anyone ever done any research for me. The research is half the fun of writing, and delving into old books and records turns up so many unexpected treasures. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
Quotes on Writing to the Market
23. What few realize is that no writer is free to write exactly as he might wish. He is guided, to a great extent, by the tastes of readers and by the choices of editors. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
24. One can write whatever one wishes, but unless it conforms to the tastes of the public at the time, it will stay right on the author’s shelf. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
25. There was a market for western stories, and I had grown up on them. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
Quotes on Education and Self-Learning as a Writer
26. When I left school at the age of fifteen I was halfway through the tenth grade. I left for two reasons, economic necessity being the first of them. More important was that school was interfering with my education. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
27. The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
28. No matter how much I admire our schools, I know that no university exists that can provide an education; what a university can provide is an outline, to give the learner a direction and guidance. The rest one has to do for oneself. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
29. Now I knew what I wished to learn and could direct my education with more intelligence. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
30. I feel very sorry indeed for any young man without an education in these days, for there is literally nowhere to go. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
31. The best of all things is to learn. Money can be lost or stolen, health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to your mind is yours forever. – The Walking Drum, 1984
32. Somewhere along the line I had fallen in love with learning, and it became a lifelong romance. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
33. I saved myself much hardship by learning from the experiences of others, learning what to expect and what to avoid. I have no doubt that my vicarious experience saved me from mistakes I might otherwise have made -not to say I did not make many along the way. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
34. There is no reason why anyone cannot get an education if he or she wants it badly enough and is persistent. Most cities have libraries, and often state libraries will mail books to a reader. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
Quotes on Important Reading and Books for Writers
35. In pursuing my education, I had been reading approximately one hundred books per year. By that I mean books completed, and it says nothing of those I dipped into or simply referred to from time to time. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
36. I was never without a book, carrying one with me wherever I went and reading at every opportunity. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
37. It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
38. Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That’s absolute nonsense. In the one year during which I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people. In offices, applying for jobs, waiting to see a dentist, waiting in a restaurant for friends, many such places. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
39. My advice is to read what entertains you. Reading is fun. Reading is adventure. It is not important what you read at first, only that you read. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
40. Every book I read opened vistas before me of the things I did not know, of the books I had not read. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
41. A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
Quotes on How to Become a Good Writer
42. A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
43. Writing is always and forever a learning process. One is never good enough and one never knows enough. I cannot repeat that too often. No matter how good a writer becomes, he can always be better. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
44. One is not, by decision, just a writer. One becomes a writer by writing, by shaping thoughts into the proper or improper words, depending on the subject, and by doing it constantly. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
45. There was so much I needed to learn that could only be learned by doing, by sitting down with a typewriter or a pen and simply writing. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
46. A writer of stories, such as I have been and am, is expected to entertain. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
47. To entertain, for me, is not enough. I have drunk deep of those fountains and I would share what I have learned. There is, woven into the texture of what I hope are entertaining tales, a good bit of how people lived, what they thought, and how they survived in desert, mountain, and city. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
48. I often write better of a place when I am some distance from it. One can be so overwhelmed by the forest as to miss seeing the trees. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
49. Gustave Flaubert said once that “Talent is nothing but long patience.” – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
50. It’s important to remember that we are writing about people. Ideas are important only as they affect people. And we are writing about emotion. A few people reason, but all people feel. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
51. The raw material is not important. It is what the writer does with the material. One writer will make you laugh, another can make you cry, and a third might write a horror story. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
Quotes on Getting Ideas for Writing
52. If a person does not have ideas, he had better not even think of becoming a writer. But ideas are everywhere. There are ideas enough in any daily newspaper to keep a man writing for years. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
53. It is not necessary to travel in order to write good stories; it is only necessary to see, to understand, to reveal. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
54. That book or that person who can give me an idea or a new slant on an old idea is my friend. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
55. Start writing, no matter about what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. You can sit and look at a page for a long time and nothing will happen. Start writing and it will. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
56. During the course of writing any story, I always generate ideas for other stories and will often stop the first one to get something on paper about the second. Before that first story is complete, it may have developed a third and a fourth. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
57. The mind is a basket . . . if you put nothing in, you get nothing out. – The Walking Drum, 1984
58. A writer is bound by no earthly ties; what he is and what he sees he creates in his mind, or his subconscious creates it for him. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
59. Ideas are all about us, in the people we meet, the way we live, the way we travel, and how we think about things. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
60. Much of my thinking during this period was done on my evening walks, usually along the road but often into a small forest of blackjack nearby. It was a quiet place where nobody ever came. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
Quotes on Writing Environment
61. People are always interested in how a writer works, as if that made a difference. Some imagine a writer must have complete quiet, or some special atmosphere. The fact is, a professional writer can write anywhere, although some environments are undoubtedly more favorable than others. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
62. I prefer my study or my bedroom at the ranch. In the first place, I am surrounded by my library, where I can check any fact that requires it. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
63. I began my writing in ship’s fo’c’sles, bunkhouses, hotel rooms -wherever I could sit down with a pen and something to write on. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
64. Some excellent writing is done these days by newspaper people working in a bustling, busy newsroom. – Education of a Wandering Man, 1989
Further Reading
If you loved the quotes by Louis L’Amour, check out the huge collection of writing quotes below. The collection features the best quotes by some of the most famous writers such as James Patterson, Dan Brown, Stephen King, J.K Rowling and Margaret Atwood among many more.
The quotes are full of valuable advice for any aspiring writer.
If you are struggling to create a business around your writing and need some encouragement, read the quotes below.