Writer Quotes · Page 364

Good writing is good writing, but that doesn't mean you can't orchestrate it or tweak it.

— John Travolta

“Non-fiction can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies.”

— V.S. Naipaul

Children's authors don't talk down or patronise their younger readers.

— John Boyne

Libraries are a consistent and major source of books for free reading.

— Stephen D. Krashen

I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop.

— Tom Stoppard

Writing is one of the main ways that I process the experience.

— Jennifer Pharr Davis

I read here and there in books, enjoying the examples and ignoring the argument.

— Mason Cooley

“distringit librorum multitudo (the abundance of books is distraction)”

— Seneca

I had this grand plan for writing the history of the United States in six volumes. This was in the mid-1990s; I…

— H. W. Brands

Most writers need to write. I write for money, really. If I won the lottery, I would never write another word. I…

— Clarissa Dickson Wright

A change of work is a good rest for the mind if you're constantly focused on writing. I like to work with…

— Angus Stone

I wanted each of my books to be very different from the others, each to be special and uncategorizable, and I knew…

— Michel Faber

A cool thing about enthusiast press is the low barrier to entry. Anyone can decide they want to set out on this…

— Zoe Quinn

Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping…

— Jorge Luis Borges

Writing is the only trade I know of in which sniveling confessions of extreme incompetence are taken as credentials probative of powers…

— George V Higgins

In America, people of a certain age ask, 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' In my house you were more likely…

— Marisha Pessl

“Pick up any book about personal finance and you’re likely to read a 200-page mind-fuck about being cheap. Of course, these books…

— MJ DeMarco

Samskrit has moulded the minds of our people to the extent to which they themselves are not conscious. Samskrit literature is national…

— Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

“She was a great and insatiable reader, surprisingly well acquainted with the classics of literature, and unexpectedly lavish in the purchase of…

— Edith OE. Somerville Martin Ross

Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on…

— Anonymous

The fact is that our kids aren't reading books - or frankly, much of anything lately. Schools are under funded, some schools…

— James Patterson

Moby Dick - that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed; that's how…

— Michael Chabon

Every single thing that I've written, regardless of it being about immigration or being in love or being married or reconnecting with…

— Celine Song

I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels…

— Jonathan Franzen

Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

— John W. Campbell

I personally own six or seven thousand books, so I - and I certainly don't want to see them go away.

— Tim O'Reilly

Truth be told, when you start your career out as a clown, you don't consider yourself a writer.

— Lizz Winstead

I don't outline; I listen to a kind of whisper inside the material.

— Jayne Anne Phillips

“The best thing about being a writer is the joy of creating a story that’s never been told before.”

— Rae

writing fiction is the best thing there is because absolutely everything is possible!

— Mario Vargas Llosa

Real life isn't required to be logical, but fiction has to make sense.

— Leigh Michaels

Don't imitate. Write what you know about, that has to be your goal.

— Roman Coppola

That's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well.

— Amos Oz

I'm writing novels because I found something I love because I tried it. Don't be afraid to shake it up.

— Adriana Trigiani

If I'm not writing a thing, depression might be looming.

— Sarah Manguso

As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.

— Taiye Selasi

When I'm writing for Esquire, my conscious thought is, I'm not writing for American Scholar.

— Denis Johnson

I am reading Henry James...and feel myself as one entombed in a block of smooth amber.

— Virginia Woolf

No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.

— Eugene Field

If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn’t hesitate to do so.

— Andre Gide