Writer Quotes · Page 576

“reading is the equivallent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with ones own”

— Arthur Sch

“One can’t force the mind, body or heart to heal in order to meet a writing deadline.”

— Sarah Gerdes

Alice Munro is an atomic writer blasting doors into narrative time.

— David Means

I didn't have any desire I might have had 10 years ago to shoot every single word that I wrote.

— Paul Thomas Anderson

I think reading is part of the birthright of the human being

— LeVar Burton

To be a writer you have to write -- and no academic degree is going to do the writing for you.

— Michelle Richmond

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.

— Ford Madox Ford

You're a reader as well as a writer, so write what you'd want to read.

— Cassandra Clare

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself…

— Pat Conroy

“If anything one writes isn't still being talked about ten years later then it wasn't worth writing in the first place.”

— Howard Hinton

“As writers we have the profound privilege and responsibility to create a new world when the current one takes a turn for…

— Chris Colfer

“When hypocrites force me to shut my mouth, I write. But if there's no stationaries at all, I'll write on ground.”

— Toba Beta

Maybe this is pathetic, but I still dread producing a book that doesn't earn back its advance. I hate obligations that are…

— Helen Garner

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient…

— Anonymous

“... the bestselling novel taking the Ankh-Morpork literary world by storm was dedicated to Commander Samuel Vimes. The title of the book…

— Terry Pratchett

It is true what Rimbaud said; If you think a book is strong enough, try it at the ocean, in the wind,…

— Klaus Kinski

Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been…

— Gary Shteyngart

“As with most things, my approach to writing has been entirely ass-backwards. I first had to become everything but a writer --…

— Quentin R. Bufogle

I read when I get up in the morning, when I can during the day and every single evening. Most of my…

— Shimon Peres

Writing for me always requires trickery. Tricking myself into sitting down, letting words tumble out until you find the good ones. It's…

— John Hodgman

I suppose we think euphemistically that all writers write because they have something to say that is truthful and honest and pointed…

— Rod Serling

“It’s kind of sad how much value I was placing in the heaps of books I owned. Obviously it was more than…

— Joshua Fields Millburn

I have always discouraged young writers from self-publishing, by which I mean going to a vanity publisher and spending your hard earned…

— Ruskin Bond

“I am a book-collector, a proud avocationist in what Eric Quayle (wrongly) asserts to be the "least vicious" of hobbies (we are…

— Paul Theroux

An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.

— Cyril Connolly

Apparently I'm well-known for my stories, my raconteur tales, that sort of thing.

— Rick Wakeman

“Great prose isn't always easy but it's always lucid.”

— B.R. Myers

If I can find the right idea, I can get out of the way and do a good story.

— David Grann

If you want to write, you have to be willing to be disturbed.

— Kate Green

When I was 20 I was immensely proud of the rows of grey-spined Penguin Modern Classics in my bookcase.

— Linda Grant

I didn't know how to be a writer. But I thought, 'I can do this.'

— Karen Robards

People inspire me to write, the good ones and the bad ones.

— Sevyn Streeter

“Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true; Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real.”

— Cao Xueqin

My perfect day in Baltimore begins with getting my five newspapers. Then I would write.

— John Waters

“Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right.”

— Amy Joy

If a writer is convinced that he is honest, then it is very difficult for him to be a bad writer.

— Primo Levi

“People visit exposed and vulnerable; writers live there”

— Alisa Hope Wagner

I think what's really hard is making sense and making what you write clear and smooth-flowing.

— Roy Blount, Jr

When I was a kid I was a huge reader, I always had a book in my hand.

— Shannon Purser

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

— Samuel Johnson