Writer Quotes · Page 373

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

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

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

— Carol Bly

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

— Ann Beattie

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

— Queen Rania of Jordan

I think precision in writing goes hand in hand with not trying to say everything. You try and say two-thirds, so the…

— Michael Ondaatje

I've been an entrepreneur, a writer, a food correspondent. I might have been an architect - but I'm bad at maths.

— Prue Leith

What do I do when writing isn't going well? Well, I don't write - which is symptom, cure, and cause. And then…

— Lorrie Moore

I don't believe in writer's block. Most of writer's block is having too much time on your hands. My mantra is that…

— Jodi Picoult

I never can understand how two men can write a book together; to me that's like three people getting together to have…

— Evelyn Waugh

People in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist can be understood completely by the reader, if…

— E. M. Forster

All of the good, weird stories I’ve written are based on things I’ve dredged out of my subconscious. That’s the real stuff.…

— Ray Bradbury

For me, when you're writing out your problems, you can kind of figure out what you're feeling. Once you know what the…

— Coco Gauff

Reading was not an escape for her, any more than it is for me. It was an aspect of direct experience. She…

— Jincy Willett

“And finally, have you trained well enough so you can say what you want to say without getting hamstrung? Have you written…

— Ray Bradbury

I think of myself as someone who thinks largely through writing. Thus I write more than most people, and I write in…

— Samuel R. Delany

I gravitated to Judy Blume early on. 'Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing' was my favorite, with a realistic and relatable protagonist…

— Jeff Kinney

I'm not like a Sears Catalog of ideas. I don't have that many ideas. I've more or less written them over the…

— Brian Helgeland

I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like…

— Mark Haddon

The way I feel about every book is this: you don't finish it, you abandon it. All of my books have in…

— Russell Banks

“Thus it has come about that our theoretical and critical literature, instead of giving plain, straightforward arguments in which the author at…

— Carl von Clausewitz

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

— Todd Strasser

“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

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

— Christopher Isherwood

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

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

— Joseph Heller

“To ask how I feel about writing is to ask how I feel about breathing.”

— Shakirah Bourne

It's probably true that everyone has a book in them, although it may not be a very good one.

— Wilbur Smith

I, personally, have found reading a continual support to writing.

— Margaret Mahy

The myth that 'old' guys can't write anything fresh is just a myth.

— Steve Lukather

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

— David McCullough

“When I was a poor kid in Maine, my collection of used paperbacks was like a pile of cheap vacations.”

— Stephen King