Writer Quotes · Page 323

“Did you read the book or did you just read the words in order?”

— Gail Giles

The job of the novel is to be true to the confusion, but not so confusing that you turn the reader off.

— Nicholson Baker

“Wow. Death by books. That would have been some way to go.”

— Beth Reekles

If there were nothing else, reading would--obviously--be worth living for.

— Nuala O'Faolain

What writes worse than a Theodore Dreiser? ... Two Theodore Dreisers.

— Dorothy Parker

I started writing, or rather, thinking, stories as a child, and at that time the reason was very clear.

— Anonymous

I liked the idea of being a writer and letting somebody else do the graft.

— Siouxsie Sioux

When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness.

— Jules Renard

I'll agonize over sentences. Mostly because you're trying to create specific effects with sentences, and because there are a number of different…

— Neil Gaiman

I'm always in search of those books where you don't want to stop reading, and 'Me Before You' is at the top…

— Lauren Weisberger

I think it does Discworld good if I don't write about it all the time: sometimes you have to get it out…

— Terry Pratchett

At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea…

— Rose Tremain

When I started work at Simon & Schuster in 1958, each of us got a bronze paperweight on which was written, in…

— Michael Korda

The short story seems like the best of all possible worlds. I do feel it is closer to writing poetry than to…

— James Lasdun

Probably all writers are at some point briefly under the impression that they are in the forefront of disintegration and chaos, that…

— Martin Amis

“Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time.”

— Roman Payne

“There, I said to myself, are the reasons for the silence and darkness that surround the library: it is the preserve of…

— Umberto Eco

Exercise II. Write a diary, imagining that you are trying to make an old person jealous. I have written an example to…

— Joe Dunthorne

“Children's literature as a literary aberration or at best a minor amusement is a notion held most strongly by people who read…

— Lloyd Alexander

“In an age that seems to be increasingly dehumanized, when people can be transformed into non-persons, and where a great deal of…

— Lloyd Alexander

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible…

— John Ruskin

So often we think, well, kids learn to read at school, I don't have to be responsible for that. But in fact…

— Emma Walton Hamilton

The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander…

— Charles Caleb Colton

Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. When you…

— Thomas Merton

“Maybe she should stop reading those damn romance novels. They were giving her crazy expectations.”

— Lexi Blake

With two books a year, I don't have time for writer's block.

— James Rollins

Writer's block is your self-critic getting in the way, because creativity will just flow otherwise.

— Maggie Rogers

Writing ... it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant.

— Winston Churchill

I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession.

— Caroline B. Cooney

Around the time I turned 30, I wanted to publish a novel

— Sara Paretsky

I have tried to explore the little talent I have for writing.

— Cyril Cusack

Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.

— Jane Austen

I love writers who are insightful enough to be cynical but choose not to be.

— Brian D. McLaren

A book exists at the intersection of the author's subconscious and the reader's response.

— William Gibson

When I went to Bosnia, I was there to tell someone else's story and I was more methodical.

— Joe Sacco

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

— Robert Frost

I never want to feel constrained by writing a novel for a specific audience.

— Christina Baker Kline

It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.

— Neil Jordan

“Because I'm the kind of girl who fantasizes about being trapped in a library overnight.”

— Rainbow Rowell

“Reading inspires us to reach further, imagine more, and search for our passports.”

— Peggy Kopman-Owens