Writer Quotes · Page 402

“There are so many good books waiting to be read, I’ll never go back and read one twice.”

— Deb Baker

“No one can teach you how to write. A writer writes, plain and simple. You improve by doing.”

— Scott Ciencin

A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no writing.

— Don Roff

What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.

— John Steinbeck

The modernness of all good books seems to give men an existence as wide as man.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

— Haruki Murakami

It's okay to be a bad writer if you have something to say.

— Bill Stott

When I wrote 'Dear Fatty,' I realised that sitting and writing alone is an absolute joy.

— Dawn French

I read over a hundred books a year and have done so since I was fifteen years old, and every book I've…

— Nicholas Sparks

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not…

— Philip Pullman

“When you write about what you dream, you become a writer. When you dream about what you write, you become haunted by…

— Amal Saleh

I write letters to my right brain all the time. They're just little notes. And right brain, who likes to get little…

— Sue Grafton

I don't live my life as a writer. I'm a mother, an African-American woman, and I do everything that everybody else does…

— Terry McMillan

You must live feverishly in a library. Colleges are not going to do any good unless you are raised and live in…

— Ray Bradbury

“For the writer who truly loves language, a trip to the copy editor is like a week at a spa. You come…

— Betsy Lerner

When I wake up in the morning, I need the writing to go to. I begin there. And that's not an accident,…

— John Edgar Wideman

We all have a lot of people inside us, yet we get to live only one life. Fiction lets us slip into…

— Steven Saylor

“To read is to struggle to name, to subject the sentences of a text to a semantic transformation. This transformation is erratic;…

— Roland Barthes

With a song, it only takes a couple of minutes to go back to the beginning and try it again to see…

— Ben Folds

Acting is a general thing; it's not like being a primary artist like a painter or writer which stands the test of…

— Tom Hollander

“There was one sure way to avoid being assigned an impromptu chore in our house - be it taking out the trash…

— Will Schwalbe

“It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than…

— Julian Barnes

I still carry the residue of the pressure I felt as a child to read and appreciate the right books. Growing up,…

— Noah Baumbach

As a young boy, I read 'Cheaper by the Dozen' and immediately became neurotic about my use of time. It taxed me…

— Ridley Pearson

“Fiction allows you to go deeper into the truth. You can put anything down and you can take chances.”

— Peter Matthieson

I have more to say as a writer than from behind a wok.

— Eddie Huang

I can't lie and say there are no bad writers. Sorry, but there are lots of bad writers.

— Stephen King

Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.

— Humphrey Carpenter

Reporting the extreme things as if they were the average things will start you on the art of fiction.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight.

— Junot Diaz

A novel should be as like life as a painting, but not as like life as a piece of waxwork.

— Mary Russell Mitford

“People live in my head. If they do anything interesting, don't worry, I write it down for ya.”

— Lauren DeStefano

There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all.

— Stephen King

You have to write a lot. And you have to rewrite what you wrote a lot more.

— Holly Black

The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.

— Francoise Sagan

A writer's duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.

— Zadie Smith

If the writing is good, I'm there. If it's something I've never done before, I'm up for that, too.

— W. Earl Brown

I know that no reader ever asks a question. A writer must force his favors upon his readers.

— Jan Neruda

Gently stroke your books, dear stranger, and remember they are dust.

— Miljenko Jergovic

“The easiest part of the writing process is whichever part I’m not currently doing.”

— Scott Tracey