Writer Quotes · Page 436

Very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external.

— Martin Amis

“It made them feel, as all good books do, less alone.”

— Jason Fagone

“Life can't be divided into chapters...only minutes.”

— Colleen Hoover

Libraries: Here is where people, one frequently finds, lower their voices, and raise their minds.

— Richard Armour

“When it comes to writing, clarity trumps all rules.”

— C.E.McLean

“For me, there is no separation. Writing is the center… But it’s all critical.”

— Christina Katz

A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.

— E. B. White

“Like people would ever want to read books on an electronic screen.”

— Anonymous

They did type me as a horror writer, but I have been able to do all sorts of things within that framework.

— Ken Kesey

Once you've invested hundreds of hours in creating a coherent universe, your story's grown to around a half-million words and can't be…

— Lynn Abbey

I was at the end of my tether when my first book was published. For eight years I didn't make a penny,…

— Orhan Pamuk

I want to do some fiction writing, I've had some pretty good luck with short stories, I'd like to do a couple…

— Janis Ian

In the most self-protective of ways, I don't think about the reader when I'm writing - I just think about the story.

— Elizabeth Berg

It took me 20 years to buy an electric typewriter, because I was afraid it would be too sensitive. I like to…

— Elmore Leonard

There were many times in my initial days as a writer when I had felt the need to talk to someone, to…

— Ravi Subramanian

The weird thing is that working within an established story was actually kind of liberating. You know the beginning and middle and…

— Dave Eggers

I wish that the adults who are 'in power' cared more about what their children read. Books are incredibly powerful when we…

— Gabrielle Zevin

I'll read pretty much anywhere and anytime, but for a while now, I've really enjoyed reading on flights, especially the longer hauls,…

— Chang-Rae Lee

Reading activates and exercises the mind. Reading forces the mind to discriminate. From the beginning, readers have to recognize letters printed on…

— Anonymous

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be…

— Cynthia Ozick

When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature. That intensity may be a…

— Raymond Chandler

Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has…

— Gao Xingjian

You are saying, are you not, I said to Manuelito, that stories have more room in them than ideas? [...] He laughed.…

— Alice Walker

“What the times demand, and in an unprecedented fashion, is that one be—not seem—outrageous, independent, anarchical. That one be thoroughly disciplined—as a…

— James Baldwin

I kind of want to be seen as an American writer, not just a New York writer.

— Jami Attenberg

Reading has been a part of my life ever since I was born.

— Marley Dias

I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.

— Norman MacCaig

“He wore binoculars around his neck the way librarians wear their glasses.”

— Jane Hamilton

Writing about Jerusalem was very stressful; every word counts.

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

Everything I say about [writing] battles applies equally well in the boudoir.

— Chris Humphreys

“Reading. I can get lost in a world and spend days there.”

— C.M. Stunich

Books are like brothers. I am an only child. Gatsby [is] my imaginary eldest brother.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Which book you cannot find in a library? Cheque-books.

— Muskaan

You live through stuff, and it affects the way you feel about the world, and you write about it.

— Adam Duritz

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.

— Donna Tartt

We have all this courage as writers, but then there's this fear.

— Sandra Cisneros

You know you’re writing well when you're throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.

— Ernest Hemingway

Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about critics.

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

I thought writing about somebody current would be a little closer to what I'm used to doing.

— Adam Clymer

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

— Bono