Writer Quotes · Page 564

“If writers were good business men, they'd have too much sense to be writers.”

— Irvin S. Cobb

I get melancholy if I don't [write]. I need the company of people who don't exist.

— William Trevor

When you write, you put your thoughts in the public space. You get both positive and negative feedback.

— Ravi Subramanian

Inside the book between the lines, was a place to rest and absorb the magic

— Sark

Anything that happens to you has some bearing upon what you write.

— John Dos Passos

The bone-breaking thing is something that I put in many narratives.

— Guy Maddin

I did not have a chance to write novels until my youngest child started school fulltime

— Anne McCaffrey

I write about things that are really happening, serious things.

— Wilson Pickett

“The artist, in making victims of his muses, remasters himself as a hero, saving them from their otherwise inconsequential lives.”

— Antonella Gambotto-Burke

You could buy my book in a paperback edition for a dollar, and in hard covers for $3.50. And for fifty cents…

— Bob Hope

People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am,…

— David Mamet

Libraries keep the records on behalf of all humanity. the unique and the absurd, the wise and the fragments of stupidity.

— Vartan Gregorian

“You could say, in a way, that I'm not actually a writer, though perhaps I might be called a recorder? ... I…

— Etienne de L'Amour

P.G. Wodehouse was a huge influence on me when I was younger, as were Edgar Rice Burroughs and George Bernard Shaw.

— Michael Moorcock

“Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way…

— S.J. Scott

Discover the time of day when you write best, and write then. For me it's about 7 am to noon. For other…

— Jon Ronson

“No one is asking, let alone demanding, that you write. The world is not waiting with bated breath for your article or…

— Beth Mende Conny

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster…

— Mark Twain

The prime function of the children's book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful…

— Roald Dahl

“Reading is first and foremost non-reading. Even in the case of the most passionate lifelong readers, the act of picking up and…

— Pierre Bayard

“A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters…

— Albert Camus

I always give my students exercises where they really have to open a vein and bleed all over the paper and that's…

— George R. R. Martin

“Reading is never purely an act of isolation. When we read, we enter into a world of commonality, whether of language, story,…

— Andrew Piper

“A novel, in which all is created by the author's whim, must strike a more profound level of truth, or it is…

— Steven Brust

I feel more comfortable each time I sit down to write, but I'm determined to get better and better.

— Nayeon

Writers' bedtimes vary, but few have been spared the shock of a copy editor's early wake-up call

— Bill Walsh

Most writers can write books faster than publishers can write checks.

— Richard Curtis

Be you writer or reader, it is very pleasant to run away in a book.

— Jean Craighead George

“Reading great books gives insight to the mind of great souls.”

— Lailah Gifty Akita

I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.

— John Updike

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

— Tom Clancy

No one who loves life can ignore literature, and no one who loves literature can ignore life.

— Laura Esquivel

And please God, grant me the wisdom to remember that I am writing for children, not golden stickers.

— Rick Riordan

“a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.”

— Joe Hill

I don't know about writing. It's quite lonely. You have to have a lot of patience with yourself.

— Ruth Wilson

I seek in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an honest diversion.

— Michel de Montaigne

It's better to write about things you feel than about things you know about.

— L.P. Hartley

People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

“A good book will pull you in from the beginning and take you on a journey you'll never forget.”

— Lauren Hammond

I write about what I know and what I have experienced. This keeps me an "honest" writer.

— Will Eisner