Writer Quotes · Page 770

The best book I read in 2007 was Stoner by John Williams. It’s perhaps the best book I’ve read in years.

— Stephen Elliott

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

— Haruki Murakami

As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn't seen him on…

— William Golding

“Are we genuinely prepared to say that working in an office building or shopping in a mall is real, while reading Tolstoy…

— Sarah Arthur

I would never tell myself, you have to write 20 pages today or something. But I do try to show up. Read…

— Celeste Ng

I didn't realize when I first started writing how much it would set me free from certain situations in my life. It's…

— Lauren Alaina

Most of the things I write, I write on spec. And because I write them on spec, there's less interference. Because there's…

— Peter Morgan

I think it can be fun to write about relationships just because so many people can relate to what you are feeling.

— Bridgit Mendler

By his very profession, a serious fiction writer is a vendor of the sensuous particulars of life, a perceiver and handler of…

— Wallace Stegner

We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to…

— Harold Bloom

“My mother, stuck in Two Rivers with a head full of unfulfilled dreams, escaped every chance she got via the Two Rivers…

— T. Greenwood

What I'm really interested in, as a reader and as a writer, is the idea of the nonfiction book that is not…

— Geoff Dyer

“I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to…

— Michel Foucault

“This is a book. It is a book I found in a box. I found the box in the attic. The box…

— Paul Harding

So he lent her books. After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still…

— Anonymous

When I grew up, my house contained only two books: the Bible and the 'Edmonds' cookbook. We were a working-class household. Books…

— Anthony McCarten

those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about…

— Anna Quindlen

Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting…

— Tracy Chevalier

“In towering letters Cicero’s words were engraved over the library entrance. Who knows only his own generation remains always a child.”

— Linda Lafferty

Many years ago... many, many years ago, I brought up a boy, and I said to him, 'Son, if you ever become…

— Walter Huston

It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the…

— Yoshida Kenko

Most of my books are about contemporary subjects, and the world changes so fast that I'm lucky when events haven't overtaken the…

— Nelson DeMille

I always wanted to write, ever since I was a kid. I started writing at the age of 11. All I wanted…

— Roger Zelazny

I might write four lines or I might write twenty. I subtract and I add until I really hit something I want…

— Grace Paley

I very seldom compose anything in my head which later finds its way into text, except character names sometimes - I'm often…

— William Gibson

“I thought I detected a bit of wonder in his voice, that he'd like to become part of a story, any story.”

— Catherine Lacey

I think because I try to keep things as real as I can, or I try to start from a place of…

— Maria Semple

I think [kids] enjoy reading, but it's a different world now. There are a lot of competitors for the imaginative attention.

— David Duchovny

If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity.

— Phyllis Bottome

“Luckily for me, I loved books. Books can enlighten but can also benight, but at least one can play one off against…

— Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my…

— Jeffery Deaver

“It is no less difficult to write a sentence in a recipe than sentences in Moby Dick. So you might as well…

— Annie Dillard

“I spend my life folded between pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I…

— Tahereh Mafi

“To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they work throughout their lives.”

— Walter Benjamin

Yeah, well, we're all writers, aren't we? He's a writer that hasn't been published, and I'm a writer who hasn't written anything.

— Steve Martin

“When students learn to wrestle with questions about purpose, audience, and genre, they develop a conceptual view of writing that has lifelong…

— John C. Bean

I think a lot, so I don't spend a lot of time actually writing - I do that part very quickly. That…

— Ru Freeman

There's plenty of times I sit down, I'm trying to write, and that feeling never comes, so I just don't do anything.

— Alex G

Learning is often spoken of as if we are watching the open pages of all the books which we have ever read,…

— Alfred North Whitehead

I always write to understand my place in the world. I can see myself and my life unfold on the page, and…

— Jason Mraz