Writer Quotes · Page 592

All fiction is lies – if it weren’t, it would be biography, history, or reportage.

— Norman Spinrad

What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?

— Tom Stoppard

No book can be so good, as to be profitable when negligently read.

— Seneca the Younger

Your second-hand bookseller is second to none in the worth of the treasures he dispenses.

— Leigh Hunt

I don't really plan too much ahead when I write, because otherwise, I get kind of bored.

— Sam Levinson

All the nice things about Suzanne are me. All the things that aren't nice, that was just the writing.

— Delta Burke

The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

— William Butler Yeats

Collaboration is a nice change of pace from the often solitary nature of the writer's craft.

— Edward M. Lerner

In the past, I travelled with 'The Hero and the Crown' by Robin McKinley: I suffer from a fear of flying, and…

— Jesmyn Ward

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one…

— Alain de Botton

I was the kind of kid whose parents would drop him off at the local town library on their way to work,…

— Neil Gaiman

But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about…

— Anonymous

But I always seem to finish a book and then think, oh God, I've got to pay a tax bill, so I'd…

— Jilly Cooper

Write about the things that attract you. Choose your subjects the way you used to choose your toys: out of desire.

— Harry Mathews

I loved writing when I was a kid and thought about being a writer then. But I didn't have the confidence or…

— Marcia Clark

You know, there are those writers who work at writing every day. I'm not one of those guys. I tend to work…

— Kevin Keck

“Well, it would be helpful to not have to go through all of these in Braille," the man said. "I'm looking for…

— Aubrey Rose

“Think of it: a writer actually possesses the power to alter his past, to change what was once experienced as defeat into…

— Franz Wright

It’s Fitzgerald’s thin-but-durable urge to affirm that finally makes Gatsby worthy of being our Great American Novel. Its soaring conclusion tells us…

— Maureen Corrigan

Complicated Grief was written in larger and more coherent (if disparate) shapes. The question was how they fit together. The mind is…

— Laura Mullen

Creating one single story often requires experimenting and planning and falling on your literary rear more than once before you find the…

— Nancy Lam

Why do you write?' Because I love words and stories so much. Because I would be grief stricken every day of my…

— Jennifer Donnelly

Finish. The difference between being a writer and being a person of talent is the discipline it takes to apply the seat…

— Anonymous

“If you are in difficulties with a book,” suggested H. G. Wells, “try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour…

— Ralph Keyes

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me.

— Jack London

“Think of this book as a new genre altogether—a when-to book.”

— Daniel H. Pink

Fiction writing and journalism, in my experience, are really excellent training grounds for each other.

— Monica Hesse

“A true friend is like a good book, the inside is always better than the cover.”

— Anonymous

“It is impossible to get rid of a book, once I take a look inside.”

— Eugenia O'Neal

Usually I write about what I care about, which is a weakness but I think also a strength.

— Mickey Kaus

Reading was like eating alone, with that same element of bingeing.

— Francine Prose

Re-writing is different from writing. Original writing is very difficult.

— David Cronenberg

“I suppose a book is still a book, even if no one but the author and his wife reads it," she said.”

— John Wyndham

I think all writers are a bit crazy; Damaged souls, incapable of doing anything else.

— Paul Auster

In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector.

— Ernest Hemingway

“You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style." —Vladimir Nabokov”

— Leslie Langtry

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea.

— Margaret Atwood

For me, the whole process involves envisioning this book in my head as I'm working.

— Daniel Clowes

How little our libraries cost us as compared with our liquor cellars.

— John Lubbock

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

— Anonymous