Writer Quotes · Page 469

“We write because we have to, not because we want to”

— Steve Berry

I'm usually writing about survival. I never planned it, but it runs through all my books.

— Mark Kurlansky

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

— Henry David Thoreau

I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it.

— Jose Saramago

“She handles the books tenderly, a glow of utter devotion on here face.”

— Kim Church

I am reading Henry James...and feel myself as one entombed in a block of smooth amber.

— Virginia Woolf

No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.

— Eugene Field

If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn’t hesitate to do so.

— Andre Gide

I was a nut for Dostoevsky. You can tell a lot from what people read between those ages. My brother was a…

— Vincent Kartheiser

We just try to write about things that are close to our hearts. We don't sit around trying to write another 'Free…

— Rickey Medlocke

My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them──by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at…

— Jane Austen

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.

— Jorge Luis Borges

The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.

— Terry Southern

You won't find a publisher until you have written the book and you won't find the time till you sit down, stay…

— Carol Drinkwater

One of the paradoxes of writing is that when you write non-fiction everyone tries to prove that it's wrong, and when you…

— Scarlett Thomas

“I've seen many strange things in my work, my friend, but a wealthy lawyer who leaves everything to go write sonnets is…

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

“The ultimate goal of any writer is to explore the lightest and darkest aspects of being. If a writer accomplishes this task,…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the…

— Joyce Carol Oates

Don't see the point in reading ghost-written autobiographies, even though some of these published lives may fascinate me. The 'ghost' is always…

— Gary Kemp

Write first. Worry about getting an agent or publisher later. Write it first. Prove you can do it and then others will…

— Po Bronson

“The thing to do is to go on, in the same suave tone, from uttering a series of banalities to expressing a…

— Lev Shestov

I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking…

— Caroline B. Cooney

The worst time in any writer's life is the two months before publication. ALL writers become mental and pathetic, even those of…

— Anne Lamott

“I don't know whether my nation will perish and I don't know which of my characters is right. I invent stories, confront…

— Milan Kundera

As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.

— Taiye Selasi

When I'm writing for Esquire, my conscious thought is, I'm not writing for American Scholar.

— Denis Johnson

I'm writing novels because I found something I love because I tried it. Don't be afraid to shake it up.

— Adriana Trigiani

If I'm not writing a thing, depression might be looming.

— Sarah Manguso

writing fiction is the best thing there is because absolutely everything is possible!

— Mario Vargas Llosa

Real life isn't required to be logical, but fiction has to make sense.

— Leigh Michaels

Don't imitate. Write what you know about, that has to be your goal.

— Roman Coppola

That's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well.

— Amos Oz

“The best thing about being a writer is the joy of creating a story that’s never been told before.”

— Rae

The sole virtue of losing your short-term memory is that it does free you to be your own editor.

— Norman Mailer

“I am more of a doer than a writer. I do not live to write. I write because I have lived.”

— Thurman P. Banks Jr

“If you have a book, and an imagination, you can never find yourself alone. Ever.”

— William Fritz

I've loved reading since I was a kid. Sometimes I have two or three books going at the same time.

— Leslie Uggams

Digressions incontestably are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading.

— Laurence Sterne

The Big Five publishing companies are dinosaurs trying to survive in a post-meteor world. They won't.

— Tucker Max

Your book bill ought to be your biggest extravagance.

— C. S. Lewis