“And you’re not the standard insecure nymph hunting for Faulkner you’ll never finish, never start; Faulkner that will harden and calcify, if… — Caroline Kepnes Copy Share Image
“There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people,… — Lemony Snicket Copy Share Image
As he approached his 28th birthday in February 1840, Dickens knew himself to be famous, successful and tired. He needed a rest,… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
The fact is that writing, like any creative undertaking, carries with it both pain and great joy. The pain is often inherent… — Judith Barrington Copy Share Image
In truth, my Anglophilia is fundamentally bookish: I yearn for one of those country house libraries, lined on three walls with mahogany… — Michael Dirda Copy Share Image
It used to be with chocolate. I would put chocolate in my studio and say, "You know, Nat, there's this chocolate you… — Natalie Goldberg Copy Share Image
To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It's sitting down and doing it whether you think you have… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
The Hawley Book of the Dead had me completely spellbound from beginning to end. A storytelling virtuosa, Chrysler Szarlan has woven a… — Anne Fortier Copy Share Image
There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“I have come to see this fear, this sense of my own imperilment by my creations, as not only an inevitable, necessary… — Michael Chabon Copy Share Image
“How the excitement comes upon me to tell it all! In the quest of writing, the heart can speed up with anticipation--as… — Sena Jeter Naslund Copy Share Image
Zeus Is Dead is full of laugh-out-loud moments, lashings of sly wit, moan-worthy puns, and a complex, fast-paced storyline. There aren't very… — Jody Lynn Nye Copy Share Image
She never managed to find herself in these books no matter how hard she tried, exhuming traits from between the pages and… — Eleanor Brown Copy Share Image
The idea of an e-book has been around since the late 1970s, when researchers at Xerox PARC got on the case. Their… — Charles Platt Copy Share Image
I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself -… — Henry James Copy Share Image
To read Lucia St. Clair Robson is to learn while being thoroughly entertained. Last Train from Cuernavaca puts us through the tragic… — James Alexander Thom Copy Share Image
... the subjective viewpoint is the only one to use regarding a library. Your true library is a collection of the books… — Carolyn Wells Copy Share Image
For any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what's superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, and, especially,… — Francine Prose Copy Share Image
As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Born Losers is a beautiful piece of writing. Scott Sandage is history's Dickens; his bleak house, the late nineteenth century world of… — William S. McFeely Copy Share Image
“From then on, Matilda would visit the library only once a week in order to take out new books and return the… — Roald Dahl Copy Share Image
“If [literature] should turn into pure propaganda or pure entertainment, society will slip back into the sty of the immediate -- which… — Jean-Paul Sartre Copy Share Image
No human society is too primitive to have some kind of literature. The only thing is that primitive literature hasn't yet become… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
I'm a storyteller, I'm not a literary writer, and I don't want to be a literary writer. People say to me, "Oh,… — Jackie Collins Copy Share Image
“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without… — Barbara Tuchman Copy Share Image
It never failed—I'd buy a new journal, write like a madwoman for ten pages, then lose total interest in the process. Three… — MaryJanice Davidson Copy Share Image
The feel of them (books) and the smell of them. A bookshop was like an Aladdin's cave for me. Entire worlds and… — Marian Keyes Copy Share Image
My dad had this outlook: It doesn't matter what I want to read - reading was a good thing. So whatever I… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
The best part of being a writer for me is immersing myself in a fictional world, which is the opposite of being… — Curtis Sittenfeld Copy Share Image
“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them—peer into them, let them fall… — William R. Manchester Copy Share Image
I graduated from college December of 2017 and looking ahead and thinking about potentially starting a book, I just kept getting hung… — Kyle Carpenter Copy Share Image
Writers. For some reason, a lot of you reject what you hear and see in your heads. If you go too long… — Sherrilyn Kenyon Copy Share Image
“Though books were potentially harmful, novels were all the more dangerous. The path of fiction could easily mislead you into the cosmos… — Elif Shafak Copy Share Image
“There are other letters, from the heirs of fictional magnates, from the widows of oil barons, from the legal representatives of incarcerated… — Teju Cole Copy Share Image
I wanted to be a writer all my life. Since I was 10. And then at a certain point I began to… — Tim Winton Copy Share Image
If you would like to write better than everybody else, you have to want to write better than everybody else. You must… — William Zinsser Copy Share Image
“Green goo bubbles in a cauldron in the center of all this chaos. On a pedestal in front of it, a book… — Rita Webb Copy Share Image
Growing up, I never gave a thought to being a writer. All I ever wanted to be was a traveler and explorer.… — Alan Dean Foster Copy Share Image
I like big books and I cannot lie. You other readers can’t deny That when a kid walks in with The Name… — Jim C. Hines Copy Share Image
![“If [literature] should turn into pure propaganda or pure entertainment, society will slip back into the sty of the immediate -- which is to say, the memoryless existence of hymenoptera and gastropods. None of this is so important, to be sure. The world can get by nicely without literature. But…” quote by Jean-Paul Sartre](https://sms4smile.com/q/i/83d/jean-paul-sartre-220_books_if-literature-should-turn-into-pure-prop_2363349.png)
