I've been writing about growing old for some time, really from the beginning of my career. It's something I'm apparently hung up… — Loudon Wainwright III Copy Share Image
I tend to start books with a very broad outline, but I always leave room for happy accidents. With 'The Passenger,' there… — Lisa Lutz Copy Share Image
At a certain point, I got used to writing on demand. I developed a habit of writing like I hired myself! I… — Jake Holmes Copy Share Image
I'm generalizing wildly, but academic books find safety in explanations that reduce the chaos of social life. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
The only thing that would ever embarrass me would be something I would write that would be badly written. — Gloria Vanderbilt Copy Share Image
I try to write everyday. I do that much better over here than when I'm teaching. I always rewrite, usually fairly close-on… — Marilyn Hacker Copy Share Image
For me, a novel is always the result of my attempt to impose myself on raw circumstances. It is a concrete form… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
“Sometimes I think there may be more truth in fiction than in real life. Or at least truth condensed so that it's… — Dean Koontz Copy Share Image
“there are stories everywhere and that people who wait for the right one to come along before setting pen to paper end… — Kate Morton Copy Share Image
I want kids to think that reading can be just as much fun and more so than TV or video games or… — Louis Sachar Copy Share Image
As a child, I felt that books were holy objects, to be caressed, rapturously sniffed, and devotedly provided for. I gave my… — Maurice Sendak Copy Share Image
You know what they're writing about Baby you know what they're writing about It's a thing called love down through the ages… — Van Morrison Copy Share Image
Be an unstoppable force. Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh. This is not wishy-washy, polite, drinking-tea-with-your-pinkie-sticking-out stuff. It’s who… — Laini Taylor Copy Share Image
I enjoy the acting, but I didn't plan on that. It fell into my lap, and I'm having a lot of fun… — David Labrava Copy Share Image
To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is, doubtless, the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to… — Anne Bronte Copy Share Image
“No one ever spoke above a whisper in the staff lounge, but I felt the need to shush her anyway. I gave… — Nick Pageant Copy Share Image
Make books your companions; let your bookshelves be your gardens; bask in their beauty, gather their fruit, pluck their roses, take their… — Samuel Ben Judah Ibn Tibbon Copy Share Image
You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to… — William Zinsser Copy Share Image
“Writers are not just writers, they are creators of worlds, sculptors of the mind, they are architects of language.” — Jamie L. Harding Copy Share Image
“Librarians, too, are gatekeepers -- not of actual experience, of course, but of its written accounts. My job is to safeguard those… — Martha Cooley Copy Share Image
Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir… — Sue Monk Kidd Copy Share Image
The writer should always serve as his own angleworm —and the sharper the barb with which he fishes himself out of blackness,… — John Hawkes Copy Share Image
I read actual books. It's cool to read on a Kindle if that's what you want to do, but for me, I… — Taylor Goldsmith Copy Share Image
I loved writing a book in which, in some ways, it's very, very classical, and in some ways I'm breaking lots of… — Neil Gaiman Copy Share Image
I've often wished when I started a book I knew what was going to happen. I talked to writers who write 80-page… — Charlaine Harris Copy Share Image
To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover,… — Terry Tempest Williams Copy Share Image
[The Women's Room] is one of those pieces of fiction that reveals itself in a different way every time. It's incredible. — June Diane Raphael Copy Share Image
I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
“A book, a poem, a play — they start as fantasms but they end up as things, like a box of crackers… — Arthur Miller Copy Share Image
In fiction, you learn about pacing and how to build tension - which is something you want in a really good nonfiction… — Monica Hesse Copy Share Image
I cannot write as well as some people; my talent is in coming up with good stories about lawyers.That is what I… — John Grisham Copy Share Image
“She remembered her books in the moments of worst sorrow, especially the ones that were made for her and the one that… — Markus Zusak Copy Share Image
You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
“She been trying to read for the past two hours—trying and failing. Even an utterly sinful romance novel hadn’t held her interest.” — Sarah J. Maas Copy Share Image
“We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at… — Mario Vargas Llosa Copy Share Image
Encourage aspiring writers to continue writing when things are going against them, when it feels hard. Explain the typical obstacles that occur,… — Patrick Modiano Copy Share Image
I've never read anything so badly written that got published. It made 'Twilight' look like 'War and Peace.' — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
'Back to Blood' really took it out of me. While I was writing it, I just never went out anywhere, except to… — Tom Wolfe Copy Share Image
“If we wrote all our past sins on one piece of paper, not a single person would end up with a blank… — Rosella Tran Copy Share Image