You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote,… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
It's partly the fault of the institutions of education. But it's partly the decision to be relieved of responsibility. Literature is simply… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
I'm tempted to say that the top three reasons for hopelessness are rejection, rejection, rejection. But let's cast our net wider. 1)… — Ralph Keyes Copy Share Image
“There will be times in your life when you will feel lost and confused. The way back to yourself is through reading.… — Matt Haig Copy Share Image
The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry The books that we would like to read we… — Carolyn Wells Copy Share Image
I would love to write more children's books. There is such a high standard out there for children's books; there are really… — Jewel Copy Share Image
How to please the public - that's the test, But nowadays I find I'm in a fix; I know they're not accustomed… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
“As soon as you start writing, even if it is under your real name, you start to function as somebody slightly different,… — Michel Foucault Copy Share Image
I have no personal knowledge of, or experience with, paramilitary hate groups, or heart transplantation, or escapees from maximum security prisons, or… — Sandra Brown Copy Share Image
“Rows and rows of books lined the shelves and I let my eyes linger on the sturdy spines, thinking how human books… — Kim Edwards Copy Share Image
“First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into… — Terry Pratchett Copy Share Image
“I like books that fit in pockets, which can lead to love, give, turn a corner, give, buy back preferred to read… — Mathias Malzieu Copy Share Image
“As a volunteer reader to the blind, Babette had some reservations about the old gent's appetite for the unspeakable and seamy, believing… — Don DeLillo Copy Share Image
I think that most of us are aware that as writers we are seeking absences, we're seeking silences, we're seeking spaces that… — Junot Diaz Copy Share Image
Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make… — Stephen King Copy Share Image
I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I… — James M. Cain Copy Share Image
“Let's not get so ecstatic we ignore the fiscal situation. As my agent so delicately pointed out, most novels--providing they get published--net… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
“Horace Greeley cautioned one upstate hopeful: “You do not realize how little the mere talent of writing well has to do with… — Mike Wallace Copy Share Image
If you ask any ordinary reader which of Dickens's proletarian characters he can remember, the three he is almost certain to mention… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“Every lover of books has authors whom he reads over and over again, whom he cares for as persons and not as… — Charles Horton Cooley Copy Share Image
“I say to myself that the result of the unnatural effort to which I subject myself, writing, must be the respiration of… — Italo Calvino Copy Share Image
“Writing has become more than just a profession, and hobby…it has become a way to express my feelings and pour my entire… — Nina Jean Slack Copy Share Image
I work via the high-tension-wire method, which is maybe going for long periods without writing while the tension builds up - when… — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
A writer, or at least a poet, is always being asked by people who should know better: “Whom do you write for?”… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
I'm not standing above the audience trying to manipulate them as a puppet master or a trickster; I'm inside the story I'm… — Scott Derrickson Copy Share Image
Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because… — Anais Nin Copy Share Image
A bad book and good marketing won't work, the same way a good book and bad marketing will also not work. There… — Amish Tripathi Copy Share Image
Follow your instincts. Do the kind of writing you love to do and do best. 'Stiff' was an oddball book - I… — Mary Roach Copy Share Image
George V. Higgins's 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle' (1970) added an extra literary layer to the con novel; James Crumley's 'The Last… — Sarah Weinman Copy Share Image
“A novelist must wrestle with all mysteries and strangeness of life itself, and anyone who dies not wish to accept that grand,… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“Writing is a physical art. And writing a book is a lot more like making a complex sculpture out of bronze than… — Heather Sellers Copy Share Image
I usually leave Reykavik for two to three weeks to go to the South Coast of Iceland where I have a small… — Sjon Copy Share Image
“Is that how it goes with writing? That as long as you are writing, no time is ever completely in the past?… — Kyung-Sook Shin Copy Share Image
My children threw me a life line: "Return to your roots - food - and rewrite your first book, Diet for a… — Frances Moore Lappé Copy Share Image
“When the occasional customer tells us his or her dream of running a bookstore someday, we recognize our own naivete in that… — Wendy Welch Copy Share Image
There are many reasons for keeping a diary: to make a note of facts that one considers important; to open one's heart,… — Alberto Moravia Copy Share Image
I don't really have a schedule; I just get up in the morning. I work at home. I don't feel that my… — Sheila Heti Copy Share Image
“He also entered a bookstore called “Books ‘n’ Stuff,” that stocked more videos and greeting cards than books. Furthermore, its supermarket lighting… — Lilian Jackson Braun Copy Share Image
You keep working on your piece over and over, trying to get the sections and paragraphs and sentences and the whole just… — Anne Lamott Copy Share Image
“These are the moments which possess the writer, not the lover, and which live on perpetually. One can return to them time… — Lawrence Durrell Copy Share Image
