Every time I start on a new book, I am a beginner again. I doubt myself, I grow discouraged, all the work… — Simone de Beauvoir Copy Share Image
“People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Spend 80 percent of your time on books and 20 percent on articles and newspapers. And by books, I don’t mean just… — Tim Sanders Copy Share Image
Most authors liken the struggle of writing to something mighty and macho, like wrestling a bear. Writing a book is nothing like… — Amy Poehler Copy Share Image
“The very qualities that make one a writer in the first place contribute to the block: hypersensitivity, stubbornness, insatiability, and so on.… — John Gardner Copy Share Image
Libraries have a special role to play in our knowledge economy. Your institutions have been and should be a place where parents… — Barack Obama Copy Share Image
Because if you're trying to write and you have unlimited time, you can procrastinate an unlimited account, but if you have limited… — Julia Cameron Copy Share Image
To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
Writing might be unalloyed joy, were it not for the fact that power is always shadowed by responsibility. Thankfully, the absolute power… — Brian Stableford Copy Share Image
I come from a tradition where the writer writes a play for the actors, rather than for himself, and the dialogue is… — Lee Hall Copy Share Image
When I was teaching Latin in girls' schools before I became a writer, I didn't much like it if parents would come… — Maeve Binchy Copy Share Image
Reading to our children and our grandchildren is something we can all try to do every day of the year. Not only… — Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall Copy Share Image
I wanted to become a director before I wanted to become a writer. When I was 10, people would ask me what… — Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt Copy Share Image
Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two… — William Zinsser Copy Share Image
“I read and re-read the books I had brought. The quality of the book didn’t matter. What was important was that there… — Sooyong Park Copy Share Image
My only wish would be to have 10 more lives to live on this planet. If that were possible, I'd spend one… — Joseph Murray Copy Share Image
I used to write in a local coffee shop, but there was another guy, another writer, who kept sitting in my favorite… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
I enjoy writing, and I know that if I can really focus on that and get some good tuturoing in English, I… — Elijah Wood Copy Share Image
I grew up reading Updike. I remember being alarmed to find that he had published short stories by the time he was… — Justin Cartwright Copy Share Image
Writing is like meditation or going into an ESP trance, or prayer. Like dreaming. You are tapping into your unconscious. To be… — Carolyn Chute Copy Share Image
The World is not enough used to this way of writing, to the moment. It knows not that in the minutiae lie… — Samuel Richardson Copy Share Image
If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of… — Graham Swift Copy Share Image
I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now.… — Candace Bushnell Copy Share Image
I think that whether you've just begun writing or whether you've been writing for fifty years - I mean, I'm excited to… — Emily Barton Copy Share Image
“There are many good reasons for writing that have nothing to do with being published. Writing is a powerful search mechanism, and… — William Knowlton Zinsser Copy Share Image
When I started writing, I said, 'I don't know how to do this. I don't know if it sounds good.' Coming from… — Khalid Copy Share Image
I think I was also afraid of the novel. I write line by line, proceeding at snail's pace, rewriting as I go… — Debra Dean Copy Share Image
Nothing changed in my life since I work all the time," Pamuk said then. "I've spent 30 years writing fiction. For the… — Orhan Pamuk Copy Share Image
“Described as a "workaholic speed-writing freak" by fellow writers, a "creative writing class drill sergeant" by his writing 'padawans', Voinov is a… — Aleksandr Voinov Copy Share Image
…..books are yours, Within whose silent chambers treasure lies Preserved from age to age; more precious far Than that accumulated store of… — William Wordsworth Copy Share Image
“Everyone has secrets. Fiction allows people to see themselves in characters, to discover healing and truth when their ‘reputation’ or shame won’t… — Susan May Warren Copy Share Image
“We are surrounded by so many books, so many words, so many thoughts... and not a single one can help us. I… — David Levithan Copy Share Image
I think that everybody who writes believes that their work has some kind of use-value, for someone, that there's some need for… — Tony Kushner Copy Share Image
I'm a reader. I like - I'm a great reader. I keep going back, though, to certain authors, just like I love… — David Small Copy Share Image
Life … is a bit like reading. … If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
I think that most of the children's writers live in the world that they've created, and their children are kind of phantoms… — A. S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“There is a writer in each one of us…it's only a matter of time before we put those emotions and experiences of… — Ariana Miller Copy Share Image
A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of… — Joseph Addison Copy Share Image
Mystery fiction is, after all, a substitute for tranquilizers, strong drink, and bad, if diverting, companions. One slips into bed ... onto… — Mary Cantwell Copy Share Image
This is all you have to do. Sit down once a day to the novel and start working without internal criticism, without… — Walter Mosley Copy Share Image
