Writer Quotes · Page 466

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

— Lauren DeStefano

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

— Mary Russell Mitford

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

— Junot Diaz

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

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.

— Humphrey Carpenter

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

— Stephen King

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

— Eddie Huang

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

— Peter Matthieson

I wouldn't encourage new writers to start off publishing through electronic media... it still isn't wide enough for the readership they would…

— Anne McCaffrey

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is…

— E. L. Doctorow

I am a big outliner. For my adult book, 'The Visibles,' I did not outline, and it took me two years to…

— Sara Shepard

I think that's what I love about writing, is the ability to try to, in a sense, take a vacation from yourself…

— Ron Rash

I often tell young people that as a writer you are very powerful, that you can make absolutely anything happen.

— Christopher Paul Curtis

We've all had that experience where we hear a song that we've liked for many years, and we finally hear what the…

— Jakob Dylan

Many writers are afraid of writing something bad, so they don't try or give up when their efforts don't lead to a…

— Lauren Tarshis

Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. ... Reading is bliss.

— Nora Ephron

If people only knew what lies at the heart of my novels! What a tumult of desires these carefully written pages conceal!…

— Julien Green

“we read fiction to satisfy a more basic need—to imagine our way into other lives, to explore characters and situations that tell…

— Tom Perrotta

I'm one of those writers who started off writing novels and came to writing short stories later, partly because I didn't have…

— Julian Barnes

Some writers just write about their own lives. Well, I don't want to do that. I want to have a really boring…

— T.C. Boyle

I've been writing since I was very young, even before I was a teenager. As far as I'm concerned, I am a…

— Dylan Moran

My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her…

— Christopher Bollen

Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the…

— Paul Auster

With a novel, you have the reader with you a lot longer, and you owe him a lot more. Obviously you have…

— Dave Barry

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

— Dawn French

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

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— Don Roff

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

— Scott Ciencin

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

— Deb Baker

“One idea to a sentence is still the best advice that anyone has ever given on writing.”

— Bill Bryson

I was anticipating that some readers might misread [the book] ROOM itself as a hymn to homeschooling.

— Emma Donoghue

“Is it possible to write a reverent novel," said Nassrin, "and to have it be good?...”

— Azar Nafisi

Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.

— Walker Percy

The books housed in one's first adult bookshelf are the geological bed of who we wish to become

— Sheridan Hay

Building a habit of reading leads to all sorts of reading.

— Gene Luen Yang

When you aren't doing too many films, people find other things to write about you.

— Arjun Kapoor

“A good book is made better by good readers and clearer by good opponents.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche