Writer Quotes · Page 242

“Of all reviews, the crushing review is the most popular, as being the most readable.”

— Anthony Trollope

Sadistic literature is not only inhumane. It is anti-human.

— Storm Jameson

“Being able to read and knowing how to read are completely different concepts.”

— S.A. Garcia

“Books are the flung-open windows to a parallel universe.”

— Kevin Ansbro

Well, the attractive thing about the subject of happiness is that it is notoriously difficult to write.

— Edward St Aubyn

How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!

— Edgar Allan Poe

A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.

— V. S. Pritchett

“Great literature will insist upon its self-sufficiency in the face of the worthiest causes”

— Harold Bloom

“I've worked really hard to make myself a better writer. I don't think writing is something that comes to people naturally; it…

— Nathan Nixon

I think it's very hard to reconcile oneself to the notion that it may not matter what you think if you still…

— Lynne Tillman

'Await Your Reply' by Dan Chaon. I've always been obsessed with the idea of disappearing and becoming someone else. Even if you…

— Lisa Lutz

The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of…

— Zadie Smith

“We find little in a book but what we put there,’ Joseph Joubert said. ‘But in great books, the mind finds room…

— A.C. Grayling

I never wanted to be a literary writer. I wanted to be an entertainer. All I wanted was to give what a…

— M.C. Beaton

“A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner. It is much better to confine yourself to a…

— James A. Michener

I don't suppose a writing man ever really gets rid of his old crocus-yellow neckties. Sooner or later, I think, they show…

— J. D. Salinger

There is nothing nicer than nodding off while reading. Going fast asleep and then being woken by the crash of the book…

— A. J. P. Taylor

“The paradox of reading is that the path toward ourselves passes through books, but that this must remain a passage. It is…

— Pierre Bayard

“It's a terrible mistake to let the perfect get in the way of the good. If you wait to publish until you…

— Anonymous

I'll have mine [The Book-Lovers' Anthology] till the day I die - and die happy in the knowledge that I'm leaving it…

— Helene Hanff

Writers are great lovers. They fall in love with other writers. That's how they learn to write. They take on a writer,…

— Anonymous

Writing is a black-box proposition. You see actors; you can see what they're doing. You can watch the director on set doing…

— Shane Black

Writing is my passion. It is a way to experience the ecstatic. The root understanding of the word ecstasy—“to stand outside”—comes to…

— Bell Hooks

“I was driven less by achievement than by trying to understand, in earnest: What makes human life meaningful? I still felt literature…

— Paul Kalanithi

Books-bright windows in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men.

— H. G. Wells

“Fiction is a lie. And GOOD fiction is the truth inside the lie.”

— Stephen King

The writer, an old man with a white moustache, had some difficulty getting into bed.

— Sherwood Anderson

Surrounded by stories surreal and sublime, I fell in Love in the Library once upon a time.

— Jimmy Buffett

Books are the air I breathe, so I don't notice the seasons.

— Emma Donoghue

If what you want to do is write, then it's madness not to do it.

— Joseph O'Neill

“The best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

I have a novel out, 'Lupus Rex,' that I wrote and am excited about that.

— John Carter Cash

“All indies self-publish but not all self-publishers are indie.”

— Orna Ross

I have a curious background for someone who turns out to be a writer.

— Jerry Spinelli

“Those who don't read good books have no advantage over those who can't.”

— Mark Twain

Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.

— Ray Bradbury

Don't write what you think people want to read. Find your voice and write about what's in your heart.

— Quentin Tarantino

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

— George Bernard Shaw

“As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.”

— Alain de Botton

I get the beginning. I get the end. Then I write the middle. That's how I do it.

— Chazz Palminteri