Writer Quotes · Page 374

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on.

— Philip Roth

“Writing is not a competition, or a fear. Writing is an art, a passion, a love.”

— Kirsty-Anne Still

It's usually quite easy to shrug and write something else instead.

— Charles Stross

“Give a monkey a stick and it will learn how to write.”

— Anthony T. Hincks

I'm a professional. So before I published any novels, I'd always been writing stories.

— Jess Walter

My entire life has been centered around my writing, and by that I mean finding the time to write.

— Jillian Medoff

For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture.

— Khaled Hosseini

“Literature, to put it another way, is an unpredictable and endless meme gone wild.”

— Anonymous

I live in the writing, as the words come out of my throat burning all that I see in the surreal valley…

— Jeremy Limn

The one thing a lifetime in the newspaper business teaches you is pace - you spend all your time trying to make…

— Carl Hiaasen

When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing does is…

— Marguerite Duras

There are different types of readers. People draw lines at which three things intersect: the character, the author, and the reader.

— David Bezmozgis

Some of my best moments have been in friends' libraries. They give you a sense of quiet, well-being and order that a…

— David Linley

“I'm a librarian, i'm a librarian and I like it quiet So, the pages can be heard I'm a librarian, i'm a…

— Jonathan Rundman

I do worry that it's impossible to write something original, that there's nothing that a human hasn't already thought of. But I…

— Arthur Phillips

“For a moment I was distracted. Books always did that to me... I liked the creamy pages, the smell of ink, all…

— Elizabeth C. Bunce

When you're writing a book, it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things [...] The…

— Roald Dahl

I've learned to write the truth. But to do that, I had to figure out what the truth was-and I had to…

— Pat Murphy

“Just as television didn't put an end to radio or the movies (to say nothing of books), I don't think e-books will…

— Leah Price

Sometimes I'm writing for magazines on assignment, but the university has to be patient with me. I mean, during the ten-week periods…

— Pam Houston

The short story is a very natural mode of storytelling; most stories can be told quickly. I always think of them as…

— Kevin Barry

It's misleading to think of writers as special creatures, word sorcerers who possess some sort of magical knowledge hidden from everyone else.…

— Ralph Fletcher

“This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of--please forgive me--wonder, of seeing things anew, things…

— Anne Lamott

“When The Journal of Words compiled its list of the one hundred best novels written in English, do you know that Pride…

— Michael Thomas Ford

It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.

— Jean de la Bruyere

“So you could write what you know. The problem, of course, is that some people don’t know shit.”

— Benjamin Percy

I know how easy it is to be swept away by stories, by things you wish were real.

— Derek Landy

I write mostly for pleasure, and the reading should ideally be for pleasure, too.

— Ruskin Bond

When I write my book, Ill tell the real story of Cheryl

— Louis Walsh

I didn't write a book. It wasn't for self-enrichment.

— Linda Tripp

I just did what any writer does, tried to listen to the characters, whether they're 18 or 80.

— Ol Parker

Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.

— Joan Didion

Life is like a book, but only you can choose what it's about.

— Brielle Amos

I was writing from the time I was 12 years old, but I originally wanted to be a novelist.

— Christopher McQuarrie

“Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.”

— Annie Dillard

To write for a living, according to Mr. Whipple, is coquetting with starvation.

— Francis Alexander Durivage

“Books are the way to stretch out people's souls, and I won't have children with small souls.”

— Jodi Lynn Anderson

Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.

— Stephen Sondheim

About 40 years ago I had an experience where I wrote a tract.

— Tim LaHaye

...I will not allow books to prove any thing." "But how shall we prove any thing?" "We never shall.

— Jane Austen