Writer Quotes · Page 428

Writing's a great skill, but thinking's a better one.

— Meg Rosoff

The wonderful thing about being an American writer is you've got this vastness to draw from.

— David Means

I write to make sense of things that don't make sense to me.

— Daphne Gottlieb

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

— Robert Hass

“Read as widely and as deeply as you can. You have to be a reader before you can be a writer.”

— Y.S. Lee

I think some writers should wait for something to say.

— Peter Orner

If I were to write the story of my life, I would shock the world.

— Caterina Sforza

“That’s what I try to do—write sentences that won’t be like sand castles.”

— William Maxwell

“What is more important to a library than anything else -- than everything else -- is the fact that it exists." […

— Archibald MacLeish

I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get…

— Leo Tolstoy

I don't really think of myself so much as a writer as a stylist, someone who came into writing from the back…

— Lindsey Buckingham

When you write a book, people legitimise it by actually reading the book and so it's almost okay to write another one.

— Eoin Macken

It's not hard to be a woman in comedy as long as you're also a writer. You have to create your opportunity.

— Kristen Schaal

I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to…

— Lydia Davis

That's what makes writer's block so painful. You think the well has run dry, maybe somewhere in the heavens the tap has…

— Taiye Selasi

“He believed books had an aura that protected him, that without one beside him he would die. He happily slept without women.…

— Richard Flanagan

The crazy thing is that when we go to somebody's house, what's better than looking at their bookshelves? Nobody's ever going to…

— Jeanette Winterson

“How does one develop compassion for someone with a completely different set of values without reading something from their point of view?…

— Jennifer Steil

“So why does our writing matter, again?" they ask. Because of the spirit, I say. Because of the heart. Writing and reading…

— Anne Lamott

Writing is a way of life. I do it because it's a way of experiencing the world, and trying to come to…

— Emily Perkins

There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is--to teach; the function…

— Thomas de Quincey

The marketplace for books when I entered the business shortly after World War II consisted of a thousand or so well stocked…

— Jason Epstein

I was read to as a small child, I read on my own as soon as I could, and I recall being…

— Marilynne Robinson

Writers are socially observant. We find people endlessly fascinating, and real life is mysterious. Sometimes it's hard to stop staring at the…

— Julianna Baggott

My books are, in a way, a record of my life - that part of it that came to flower and fruit…

— John Burroughs

“Ir you're a writer, reading is part of your job description. ~ Mark Rubinstein”

— Mark Rubinstein

Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?

— Edith Wharton

I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am.

— Jane Austen

Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction .

— A. S. Byatt

If you want to be a writer, you don't want to live in a comfortable place.

— Benjamin Alire Saenz

“She'd been an actress, an artist's model, once or twice a kept woman, through all a voracious reader.”

— Glen Duncan

There always seems to be an element of faith in my writing.

— Michaela Coel

My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.

— Tahar Ben Jelloun

Good writing is like a bomb: it explodes in the face of the reader.

— Nuruddin Farah

“I read everyday, because reading takes me away, away to a place where nothing is impossible.”

— Manoj Arora

I've been a faithful reader of the great classical documents of economics, or tried to be.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

When a book is going well, it tells you where to go.

— Neel Mukherjee

“I never really chose to be a writer. It's just always been what I do. Writing chose me...”

— Té Russ

“Living life distracts from writing. Writing distracts from living life. Therein lies the conundrum.”

— Ksenia Anske

“Writer: It's not an occupation; it's a compulsion.”

— Teresa Nielsen Hayden