Writer Quotes · Page 470

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

— Barbara Kingsolver

Anybody can lead a frivolous life. A frivolous writer, however, must have taste and intelligence.

— Mason Cooley

“The Book does not play James Joyce with the Universe.”

— Hal Duncan

Books are magic: you never know where they're going to end up.

— Dan Savage

“A good library contains something in it to offend everyone.”

— Jo Goodwin

It's the writing, not the being read, that excites me. Joy is in the doing.

— Virginia Woolf

Writing is solitary. You spend so much time alone and in your own mind, telling stories.

— Ruth Ozeki

I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.

— Anonymous

As a fiction writer, of course, you need to take some leeway with certain aspects of history to make the story work.

— Joseph Boyden

Spies go to bars for the same reason people go to libraries: full of information if you know where to ask.

— Michael Weston

“Writers are like supreme beings. We can create worlds in a matter of days and we can destroy them just as fast.”

— Linda Nelson

The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you…

— Austin Kleon

I feel like I'm a secondary artist, a kind of a conduit for the writer, and if it's a good writer, then…

— Mamie Gummer

One day, when I own a house, I'll keep a library full of books. Books are different from other possessions-they're more like…

— Blake Mycoskie

Authors are often sent a number of books to read for possible review and advance praise. It can be easy for new…

— Kameron Hurley

“When writing fiction, you learn to only put things and characters in, that are going to progress your story. There is something…

— Carl Henegan

“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this: A…

— Robin Sloane

“She read to find out what it was like to be French or Russian in the nineteenth century, to be a rich…

— Penelope Lively

Well, I think it’s extraordinarily fun to write, and I look forward to it every day, but that doesn’t mean I think…

— David Guterson

I sat staring up at a shelf in my workroom from which thirty-one books identically dressed in neat dark green leather stared…

— Edna Ferber

The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a…

— Vaclav Havel

“The writing seemed like the books that held it; crumbly and antique and bearing the stink of centuries. Still, it was compelling.…

— Lauren Groff

Here's my rule: You always want to pay cash for your own books, because if they look at the name on the…

— Carl Hiaasen

The thing is - do we really need another writer who writes a book every eighteen months, whether the quality is wonderful…

— Junot Diaz

Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery.

— Henry Miller

“Writing is like running away. Running away to a place you made with your own hand.”

— YKRaikou

“There are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books.”

— Philip Roth

One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work.

— Voltaire

Libraries have always been humanities' way of preserving its collective wisdom

— Umberto Eco

I write much better in the nonconfines of the early morning than I do the clutter of the day.

— Rod Serling

In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter.

— Annie Proulx

Reality and Fiction are different in that fiction has to make sense.

— Ray Bradbury

No writer, however popular, disdains a reader, however humble.

— Vera Caspary

Ultimately, it's about the quality of the writing whatever style you are writing.

— Tibor Fischer

There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over.

— Gail Carson Levine

Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost any subject he may.

— Walter Savage Landor

You cannot live this life anymore without the ability to read.

— Walter Dean Myers

I had three brilliant English teachers at secondary school. They found the writer in me.

— Anthony Horowitz

I was a very happy banker, but I feel happier as an author.

— Amish Tripathi

Younger writers and smaller writers need to live and get by. They need to be paid. It has to be fair.

— Nicola Roberts