Writer Quotes · Page 340

“The farther away you get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources.”

— Nelson Algren

You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing.

— Alice Munro

Actors should be writers. While a writer puts the story on paper, an actor puts it on screen.

— Suhasini Maniratnam

“By its very nature, a writer’s mind is a monkey mind — and meditation, alas, kills the monkey.”

— Mara Altman

“Apparently the law of Inertia affects writing too.”

— A.A. Cheshire

The novelist helps us to see things we might not notice otherwise.

— Madeleine L'Engle

As a kid, I used to go to the library and take out all the art books.

— Cheech Marin

The difficulty is not to write, but to write what you mean.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility.

— Elizabeth Bowen

When you tell a story in the kitchen to a friend, it's full of mistakes and repetitions. It's good to avoid that…

— Isabel Allende

Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I've begun them I know I have years rather than months of…

— Graham Swift

writers who go outside the lines when they draw pictures of the world are seldom rewarded for their efforts.

— Jennifer Stone

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its…

— Augustus Hare

A writer's life suits me. It's fairly, well, other people might think it was actually rather dull, but that's fine because I…

— Ronald Frame

An autobiography is not about pictures; it's about the stories; it's about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without…

— Boris Becker

That's the thing about a great book. Every time you read it, it's different, because you're different. You've changed since the last…

— Jessica Zafra

My experience is, the writer I was when I began was only a fraction of what I feel capable of doing now.…

— Anthony McCarten

Royal Young has accomplished a rare feat in his fresh and riveting debut: he manages to recount his fascinating youth and unconventional…

— Kristen Johnston

I only ask in all kindness that the man who wishes at this time to have my books will by no means…

— Martin Luther

It drives me crazy to do readings of my books, because if I read anything I've written in the past, I'd like…

— Chuck Klosterman

“Let me repeat. I have not read all the work of this present generation of writing. I have not had time yet.…

— William Faulkner

I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather doesn't happen, I may…

— Alice James

“HEADMASTER: I was a geographer. I went to Hull. IRWIN: Oh. Larkin. HEADMASTER: Everybody says that. 'Hull? Oh, Larkin.' I don't know…

— Alan Bennett

“Sure, I've always been into the Big Bang theory of passion, but as something thoretical, something that happens in books that you…

— Jandy Nelson

For me, writing clarifies things. It gives meaning, and it makes me see the connections.

— Firoozeh Dumas

“A writer's mind is a place where demons kill angels in disguise.”

— Ram Vignesh

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

— Voltaire

“Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer.”

— Virginia Woolf

The first thing a writer needs to know is what kind of writer he/she is.

— Andre Aciman

A man makes his reputation not by what he writes, but by what others write about him.

— Vikrant Parsai

Habent sua fata libelli et balli [Books and bullets have their own destinies]

— Ernst Junger

You write with ease, to show your breeding, But easy writing's vile hard reading.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

“Children learn to read by being in the presence of books.”

— Horace Mann

Writing is the product of a deeply disturbed psyche, and by no means therapeutic.

— Edna O'Brien

“Gone was the meek little librarian. Gavin made me wanton and reckless”

— Kendall Ryan

“Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.”

— Neil Gaiman

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

— Walter Bagehot

Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.

— Jeanette Winterson

Reading and exercising are two things in life that are not necessary.

— Thundercat

A lot of my time is spent reading antique or out-of-print books of reference.

— John Hodgman