Writer Quotes · Page 339

I've always been a writer, I've always been a storyteller, but I never thought about screenwriting.

— Diablo Cody

What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing.

— Chinua Achebe

If I could say anything to aspiring writers, it's to keep your own counsel, first and foremost.

— Elizabeth Berg

My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.

— Beverly Cleary

“Books educate and inspire, and they soothe souls -- like comfort food without the calories.”

— Elizabeth Berg

To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.

— Julian Barnes

The language fictional characters use is chosen for effect, at least if the author is concentrating.

— John M. Ford

Well, I'm reading about the battle of New Orleans right now. I've got an eclectic reading list.

— George W. Bush

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

— Joyce Carol Oates

I get intrigued by a first lin and I write to find out why it means something to me. You make discoveries…

— E. L. Doctorow

“Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute…

— Mark Slouka

“What is imagination? I don’t believe in fiction. In my mind everything comes from a part of who a writer is.”

— Anonymous

What I'm really addicted to is getting people to understand that if their kids aren't competent readers coming out of middle school,…

— James Patterson

“But why this obsession with what's actually true, the real, all that? Can't you accept that our lives are always part fiction?”

— Bhaskar Ghose

“Isn't it what all librarians strive toward, at least in the movies and cliches? Silence, invisibility, nothing but a rambling cloud of…

— Rebecca Makkai

After these three novels I gave up writing novels for a time; I was dissatisfied with romantic doom, yet didn't see much…

— Nicholas Mosley

Richard Stark writes a harsh and frightening story of criminal warfare and vengeance with economy, understatement and a deadly amoral objectivity-a remarkable…

— Anthony Boucher

You need to keep something for yourself. As a writer, I feel that even more strongly. I feel like I need to…

— Tracy Chapman

I have to admit that I am really partial to the look and feel of a book. I have been that way…

— Al Seckel

I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in…

— Ray Bradbury

“What worries me is that a load of shite has been talked about digitisation as being the new Gutenberg, but the fact…

— Jeanette Winterson

Elisabeth Sheffield's new novel is multilayered, smart, beautifully written, and funny. I was taken in by the first paragraph and held firmly…

— Percival Everett

“It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of…

— Anne Fadiman

“The librarian thought the problem was just that the right books weren’t breeding with each other and proposed a forced mating program.…

— Lev Grossman

Since childhood, I wrote a lot of fiction, a lot of stories, but I most loved writing essays.

— Jill Lepore

A publisher many years ago asked if I'd like to write a novel for £50. And I said, 'Absolutely.'

— Tom Stoppard

Half the time I pick up a book, that's what I'm trying to get.

— Donald Miller

“You'll never be as good as the next page you write, or as bad as the last one.”

— D.E.M. Emrys

Neither the writer nor the reader can save the world by themselves. Or escape it entirely.

— Amitava Kumar

To be an honest writer, you have to be away from home, and totally alone in life.

— Miguel Syjuco

“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future. Just ask Ray Bradbury.”

— Kami Garcia

Writing of that caliber spoils you for any other kind of writing for awhile. But that's probably good.

— Mercedes Ruehl

“The writer's silent mind is a period of intermission before orchestrating a symphony of words.”

— Khaled Talib

“Writing at its best is simply taking dictation from your soul.”

— Catherine Carrigan

I'm one of the idiots that negotiates after I write.

— Larry David

“Don't buy books for your shelf, buy them for yourself.”

— Saji Ijiyemi

“Nonfiction lets us learn more; fiction lets us be more.”

— Kylene Beers

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

— James Russell Lowell

I keep writing because it is deeply pleasurable to me.

— Cathy Marie Buchanan

Real writers write because they love to write. They don't write for public acclaim.

— Chuck Palahniuk