Writer Quotes · Page 276

“There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Every Kenyan writer has offered me something to hold onto, something to believe in.

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

If they won't write the kind of books we like to read we shall have to write them ourselves.

— Anonymous

Reading isn't the opposite of doing, it's the opposite of dying.

— Will Schwalbe

'Monstress' has been hard because I want to keep writing longer, but I can't.

— Marjorie Liu

If you cut funding to libraries, you cut the lifeblood of our communities.

— Richard M. Daley

“Authors write books for one, and only one, reason: because we like to torture people.”

— Brandon Sanderson

It's gratifying that it does; I love to give readings.

— Ann Beattie

If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not…

— Samuel Johnson

The writer, in order to proceed, is theoretically trying to predict where his complex skein of language and image has left his…

— George Saunders

I think if you want to make a recipe for making a writer, have them feel a little out of place everywhere,…

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

Editors have grown timid... a brave advance is almost inevitably followed by quick back-tracking, generally by dilution and debasement of the original…

— Muriel Rukeyser

“During our leisure time, not counting work, each of us processes 34 gigabytes or 100,000 words every day.”

— Daniel Levitin

I just write stuff down and pile it up, and when I get enough stuff, I spread it out and look at…

— August Wilson

I find now I'm reading a lot more nonfiction, simply because every time I read fiction, I think I can write it…

— Chris Claremont

At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly -…

— Patrick deWitt

“Books were always my friends Last more than fifty years Books gave me dreams Dreams resulted in missions Books helped me confidently…

— A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

There were two sets of double doors leading out of the antechamber, one marked STACKS and the other TOMES. Not knowing the…

— Patrick Rothfuss

We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, -- it is…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“I think a writer should always be surprised; and the more I write, the more it seems that the language itself, when…

— Ciaran Carson

I grew up in rural Tennessee. There were no bookstores in the town, but the school had a little library and the…

— Michael Sims

I'm not patient at all. I avoid writer's block by writing. I power through with a bad version, so I can move…

— Anders Holm

It's interesting that reading, like listening to podcasts, is a lone pursuit, one where we keep our mouths shut and let someone…

— Sara Pascoe

“I write so others might contemplate things out of the ordinary. I write to make people feel—to cause laughter and tears, to…

— Richelle E. Goodrich

Learning to read and write changes lives; it means jobs, money, health, and dreams fulfilled.

— Queen Rania of Jordan

An essay is a work of literary art which has a minimum of one anecdote and one universal idea.

— Carol Bly

The story you are about to read is a work of fiction. Nothing - and everything - about it is real.

— Todd Strasser

Good novels are not written, they are rewritten. Great novels are diamonds mined from layered rewrites.

— Piers Paul Read

Writing does for me what giving milk does for a cow.

— H. L. Mencken

Whether he be an original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself.

— Jose Ortega y Gasset

“If you really have talent, you know, you'll go on writing - whatever people say to you.”

— Christopher Isherwood

“Maybe it's not about the journey but rather the way you imagine the journey when you read a book.”

— BeaOngjoco

“Secondhand books are full of mysteries, which is why I like them. Frederick”

— Cath Crowley

Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays

— E. B. White

“She was never without a good book close by, not even when she was lying in bed with nothing on her”

— Joseph Heller

Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

— Patricia Reilly Giff

I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.

— Natalie Goldberg

When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think.

— Charles Lamb

I spend a lot of my time just looking at words and grammar and writing things down that I don't know.

— John Grant

Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.

— David McCullough