It is always difficult to get across to people who are not professional writers that a talent to write does not mean… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“Having read several prize-winning novels, Fancy was confident that she now knew the recipe: 1. Write a simple narrative. 2. Make a… — Jaclyn Moriarty Copy Share Image
“The library in 2020 will be ruled by geeks. In my happy vision for the future, libraries are ruled by benign geek… — Sarah Houghton Copy Share Image
I was approaching the age of 40 with a substantial publication record, but had not yet held any position in a chemistry department. — John Pople Copy Share Image
If the day's writing has been particularly good or particularly bad, a glass of scotch will be involved. — Stephen J. Dubner Copy Share Image
“The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live, and so far… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I am reading Sienkiewicz. What tormenting reading. What a powerful genius! And there never was such a first-rate writer of the second-rate… — Witold Gombrowicz Copy Share Image
I don't read anything anymore. I don't have the eyesight. I read my own copy, that's all. I think I've read everything… — John Gould Copy Share Image
“I run my fingers down the spines of old books and ancient tales. I smell the ink and feel the pages as… — Liz Newman Copy Share Image
“I cannot have a sufficiency of books. Indeed, I have more than I should... Books give utter delight: they talk with us...… — Francesco Petrarca Copy Share Image
If you write an original, it's like you went in and dug a well, and you hit oil. But an adaptation, it's… — Brian Helgeland Copy Share Image
Girlchild . . . unfolds a compelling, layered narrative told by a protagonist with a voice so fresh, original, and funny you'll… — Mameve Medwed Copy Share Image
Thousands of volumes have been written about aviation, but we do not automatically have thousands of true and special friends in their… — Richard Bach Copy Share Image
She told me later that she had made a kind of note of me in her mind, as, scanning the shelf for… — Evelyn Waugh Copy Share Image
I thought a book on miracles might be a great idea, but just because it's a great idea doesn't mean I'm supposed… — Eric Metaxas Copy Share Image
Look at anyone's bookcase at home, no matter how modest, and you're going to find a book that contains wisdom or ideas… — Jonathan Nolan Copy Share Image
“Want to write? Read. Want to write well? Read 3000 pages, and write 1000. At the end, you will be fluent in… — Richard Wyndbourne Copy Share Image
Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to… — William Golding Copy Share Image
One thing you can't intend is how you will be read. I hear it said a lot that my books are about… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
My writing day follows my family's day. I get a good few hours in the mornings when the kids are out of… — Chang-Rae Lee Copy Share Image
I'm one of those people who has to write. If I don't write, I feel itchy and depressed and cranky. So everybody's… — Libba Bray Copy Share Image
“It’s one of the great perks of being a librarian,” Julie said. “I can read whatever I want, whenever I want, and… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
“In the legal respect, after the execution of the supposed incendiaries, the other half of Moscow burned down.” — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
Writers are troubled about finding time to write and writer's block and publicizing books that aren't books yet. They agonize over how… — Deb Caletti Copy Share Image
I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it's a paragraph in my column. — Don Marquis Copy Share Image
All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence,… — Isabel Allende Copy Share Image
I write because I actually enjoy writing. It's a plus and a fringe benefit that, you know, I can actually provide for… — Ne-Yo Copy Share Image
“I am intrigued by writers who garden and gardeners who write. The pen and the trowel are not interchangeable, but seem often… — Marta McDowell Copy Share Image
The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
Creative people feel huge ownership of our content; we want everything to be done ourselves. But in book writing, there's a process:… — iJustine Copy Share Image
I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns. I'm watching it burn right to the ground. — Jandy Nelson Copy Share Image
Remember that your job as a practicing writer is to remember it's never going to be perfect on your first pass. — Brandon Sanderson Copy Share Image
“Dreams have never been this hot! Pleasures of the Night sizzles as a romance, enthralls as a paranormal, and captivates with a… — Susan Grant Copy Share Image
You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down… — Aaron Copland Copy Share Image
What makes a publishing house great? The easy answer is the consistency with which it produces books of value over a lengthy… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Fact and fiction carry the same intrinsic weight in the marketplace of ideas. Fortunately, reality has no advertising budget. — Daniel Suarez Copy Share Image
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.” Abraham Lincoln” — Rriiver Nyile Copy Share Image
Christopher Hitchens was a writer and an orator with a matchless style, commanding a vocabulary and a range of literary and historical… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books. — John Ruskin Copy Share Image
“What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons; we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless 'Why?'… — Yevgeny Zamyatin Copy Share Image