For almost every novel I've written, I've read the daily newspaper of the time almost as if it were my current subscription.… — Thomas Mallon Copy Share Image
I tell people that life is like a book. Sometimes you've just got to turn the chapter. Even if you don't understand… — Danny Gokey Copy Share Image
Authors should do multiple submissions to agents. I mean, that's the way the business world works and whether or not the industry… — Brad Thor Copy Share Image
“(...) perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
Memoir is a unique opportunity to revisit yourself. I don't mean by memory. I mean in the revision process. You don't just… — Joshua Mohr Copy Share Image
“I've come to suspect that whenever any ability is difficult to learn and rarely performed well, it's probably because contraries are called… — Peter Elbow Copy Share Image
I think the main thing that we can do as adults helping young people to find the joy in reading, whether we're… — Emma Walton Hamilton Copy Share Image
I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until… — Harper Lee Copy Share Image
“Learning became her. She loved the smell of the book from the shelves, the type on the pages, the sense that the… — Robert Goolrick Copy Share Image
I think I'm a very lazy writer and by that I mean that I do not battle, I don't struggle too hard… — Wole Soyinka Copy Share Image
“Writing is hard . That's why so few people stick to it and actually finish things. And why you have a right… — Andy Ihnatko Copy Share Image
The moment when the finished book or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finished books arrives on my doorstep is the… — John Updike Copy Share Image
“Maybe Laura’s real problem came in admitting this: there was nothing new under the sun. To write a story would be, somehow… — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Actual message in letter I mailed: Congrats on getting married! Here’s a hundred-dollar gift certificate to Amazon.com. You could buy something practical,… — Jarod Kintz Copy Share Image
But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
Truth is stranger than fiction," as the old saying goes. When I watch a documentary, I can't help crying and then I… — Hiromu Arakawa Copy Share Image
A lot of people get to the point in their careers where blurbs are ghostwritten for them, because they're like, "I want… — Emily Gould Copy Share Image
I wish I could go back and rewrite my first book, You Bright and Risen Angels; I could do a better job.… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
I don't know how to write a novel in the world of cellphones. I don't know how to write a novel in… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Even though I'm a writer and I love books and writing books is my favorite thing to do, when you teach, and… — David Bianculli Copy Share Image
Scrivener is where I live. I'm planning the next novel, two screenplays and a couple of short stories with it and it's… — Michael Marshall Smith Copy Share Image
“I would probably have to say that reading fiction — those stories fill the space that other people might use religious stories… — Tom Perrotta Copy Share Image
“I had been a writer all of my life, every waking second, and now that part of my life was over. I… — Bonnie Greer Copy Share Image
Something I always tell students is, when you're writing something, you want to write the first draft and you want it to… — Sandra Cisneros Copy Share Image
I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
The Revelation was my master's project, and after I finished it, I thought I'd send it off to a publisher and within… — Bentley Little Copy Share Image
Like a lot of people, I read 'The Diary of Anne Frank' again and again and again when I was growing up… — Monica Hesse Copy Share Image
“Instead, I mean the formal aspect of a literary work that makes it possible for critics to describe a text as, say,… — Sianne Ngai Copy Share Image
By definition, memoir demands a certain degree of introspection and self-disclosure: In order to fully engage a reader, the narrator has to… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
If you want to be good at anything, you have to work hard at it. It doesn't just fall from the sky.… — PJ Harvey Copy Share Image
The only good writing is intuitive writing. It would be a big bore if you knew where it was going. It has… — Ray Bradbury Copy Share Image
“This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don't understand very… — Stephen King Copy Share Image
The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger (tutor to Nero) complained that his peers were wasting time and money accumulating too many books,… — Daniel Levitin Copy Share Image
“Literature could turn you into an asshole: he’d learned that teaching grad-school seminars. It could teach you to treat real people the… — Chad Harbach Copy Share Image
When I finally began to publish, my father never read my work. He'd say, 'Oh, that's your mother's sort of thing.' But… — Peter Carey Copy Share Image
“You are a lover of words, one day you will write a book People turn to you, because you give voice to… — Ashley Rice Copy Share Image
It seems to me that life's circumstances, being ephemeral, teach us less about durable truths than the fictions based on those truths;… — Madame de Stael Copy Share Image
“The stories Hemingway told, the life he lived, all of it ended with a squeeze of a finger on a trigger. What… — Kamal Ravikant Copy Share Image
I would give them (aspiring writers) the oldest advice in the craft: Read and write. Read a lot. Read new authors and… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image