Writer Quotes · Page 637

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other.

— William Zinsser

Writing seems to be more difficult as you move through the years.

— George Crumb

I have a bad habit of reading more than one book simultaneously!

— Celeste Ng

“If I never received a bad review then I wouldn't be a real writer, but I much prefer the good ones”

— Charity Parkerson

Writing novels is sitting in a room by yourself for a year.

— Greg Iles

“Books are like music. Everyone has their own taste and it's not always for everyone.”

— Michael Benavidez

“recognize the evidence through which the world speaks to us like a great book...”

— Umberto Eco

I have stacks and stacks of journals. I'll change the names if I ever decide to publish them.

— Carolyn Murphy

There's just something "off" about equating the act of spending three years writing a book with the act of someone exploiting themselves…

— Marie Calloway

I am a writer who has a policy to allocate 90 percent of my time for research and the remaining 10 percent to write.

— Andrea Hirata

I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between…

— Jonathan Coe

If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account.

— V. S. Naipaul

Writing is not "the establishment of a professional reputation" as if one were a doctor or lawyer; it is not properly in…

— Elizabeth Hardwick

I write for myself. I don't write because I have a record coming out. I write because I want to. I need…

— Hunter Hayes

People say, 'You're like Dickens', but I'm not like Dickens. Zadie Smith is a Dickensian writer because she's writing about society now,…

— Sarah Waters

“I keep going;I keep writing because I know something good will happen, and I want to see it when it happens.”

— Millicent Ashby

Word books traditionally focus on unusual and quirky items. They tend to ignore the words that provide the skeleton of the language,…

— David Crystal

When you send off a short story, it sits on the editor's desk in the same pile with stories by the most…

— Daniel Quinn

You know, I began my life as a creative person writing true things for magazines and telling some very honest, straightforward personal…

— John Hodgman

To write about history or language is supposed to be within the reach of every man. To write about natural science is…

— Edward Augustus Freeman

You will feel discouraged; you will lose confidence in your abilities; you will be bored with the characters–and the only way to…

— John Dufresne

“Vladimir Nabokov and George Orwell had quite different gifts, and their self-images were quite different. But, I shall argue, their accomplishment was…

— Richard M. Rorty

“A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or…

— Mark Twain

And I came to understand, in a way I never had before, that books are truly the stuff of miracles. I even…

— T.A. Barron

“I want to write a book called “Conversations.” Of course, it’s all talk at this point.”

— Jarod Kintz

“...a memoir is meant to be an impression of life, and not a photograph.”

— Jennifer Finney Boylan

I cannot stand public attention, I just can't. Of course, if I may I might write something instead

— Elfriede Jelinek

I guess I have a weird habit of writing body part metaphors.

— Lauren Mayberry

Like most writers I spend a lot of my time sort of thinking, "It's such agony, I can't do it."

— Geoff Dyer

A writer is not interested in explaining reality, he’s only interested in capturing it.

— Brendan Kennelly

When books are opened, we discover that we have wings

— Helen Hayes

When you write things down, they sometimes take you places you hadn't planned.

— Melanie Benjamin

I absolutely adored Wuthering Heights and fell in love with Heathcliff as most girls do.

— Margaret Forster

“Writing isn't a hobby, it's a lifestyle and a movement.”

— Lilith. A

“Writers are different,” said Waldegrave. “I’ve never met one who was any good who wasn’t screwy.”

— Robert Galbraith

When something irritates me, I don't go home and write; I just don't do that.

— Kerry King

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

— Julian Barnes

I wrote a novel, so now they can call me a novelist. I tell stories; that's it.

— Nathan Englander

A writer's mind seems to be situated partly in the solar plexus and partly in the head.

— Ethel Wilson

I started reading when I was about three, a little over three.

— Chuck Jones