Writer Quotes · Page 587

A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.

— John Steinbeck

I have a crazy background in music, both as a performer and writer.

— Jesse Itzler

Read and write with a sensitive ear. The craft of writing is very important. Practice the craft.

— Henry Petroski

“Any adult with an ID can get a free “reader identification” and use the library.”

— Patricia Schultz

Terry Pratchett's right up my alley ... give him a try!

— Piers Anthony

You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?

— Anonymous

“Being a writer brings out a sassy woman inside me, and I love her so.”

— Anna Bayes

Reading is the journey of those who cannot take the train. . .

— Rick Sutter

My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short…

— Zadie Smith

Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with…

— Ralph Ellison

'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry and 'The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver have stuck with me throughout my life, and I think…

— Tess Gerritsen

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

— John Updike

If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to…

— Lori Lansens

I have this identity for myself as a writer and the only thing that can happen is that I chip away from…

— Mitchell Hurwitz

“You see, I believe that you cannot be taught to 'write.' You can be taught grammar and punctuation, but you cannot be…

— Robert J. Randisi

I can't believe there will ever be a time when the book is truly obsolete. It is the perfect technology and feeds…

— Katherine Paterson

You don't go to other books and take little pieces because although say a romantic scene may have been many times before…

— Bill Gates

“Some people buried their fears in food, she knew, and some in booze, and some in planning elaborate engagements and weddings and…

— Jenny Colgan

Because I'm such a creative person, and I've always got my nose in a book, I suppose it was only a matter…

— Paul Kane

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Good writing starts strong. Not with a cliché (“Since the…

— Anonymous

“We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how…

— C.S. Lewis

“Had she read any good books lately? At all? She could tell him that she was going to take out a subscription…

— Mary Balogh

“[when]asked, “What should I do if I want to become a writer?” “Well,” Doris said, with that steely twinkle in her dark…

— Doris Betts

“a lot of young viewers, but I also have a lot of older viewers. This chapter is for my older fans—those of…

— Ellen DeGeneres

“The best antidote to writer's block is...to write.”

— Henriette Anne Klauser

“Tacitus did not write a most dangerous book. His readers made it so.”

— Christopher K. Krebs

“If you want to write, write. It’s as simple as that.”

— K.D. Green

“Living in a house with a large library,” she said, “is a little like living in heaven.”

— Anonymous

“Society places the writer so far beyond the pale that society does not regard the writer at all.”

— Annie Dillard

I started trying to write when I was in second or third grade.

— Margaret Haddix

In some ways, certain books are more powerful by far than any battle.

— Henry A. Wallace

You can recover from the writing malady only by falling mortally ill and dying.

— Jules Renard

“To know your way round a library is to master the whole of culture, i.e. the whole world.”

— Sophie Divry

No more fiction, for now we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Somehow, as a writer, you tend to use words to paper over structural cracks.

— Stephen Fry

There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar.

— Amy Bloom

Every writer secretly hopes that what he or she has written will endure.

— Jonathan Coleman

I don't want everyone to read anything; I like us all reading different books.

— Penn Jillette

I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil.

— William Styron

“Browsing through the shelves in bookstores or libraries, I was completely happy.”

— Louis L'Amour