Writing does not numb, comfort, or soothe me. It does the opposite. It tends to excite me and reinscribe pain. It doesn't… — Myriam Gurba Copy Share Image
“Reading helps her escape. It lets her escape to an imaginary world where she can live another life. Where she can forget… — Madeleine Beckett Copy Share Image
Most of us start from that position of irony now and what I wanted to do - really felt like I had… — Ben Lerner Copy Share Image
'John Henry Days' was already half in the can before my first book came out, so I'd already started something that was… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“You have to read a book at the right time for you, and I am sure this cannot be insisted on too… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“For me, all writing -- storytelling and style -- gets back to the Bible, Twain and Hemingway, and not in that order.” — Dennis R. Miller Copy Share Image
Literature begins with the possible model of experience, and what it produces is the literary model we call the classic. — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
I write in my house, at my desk, where I have Christmas lights strung over it to try and convince me that… — Kate DiCamillo Copy Share Image
There are quite a number of people in the reading-room; but one is not aware of them. They are inside the books.… — Rainer Maria Rilke Copy Share Image
“Historians, to be sure, have subsequently dug about in the byways of American culture and exposed signs of rebellion and dissatisfation with… — James T. Patterson Copy Share Image
I do not often follow my characters off on tangents or change my story on a whim. I have an outline which… — Megan Chance Copy Share Image
Writing the short story is essentially an act of grace. It's not a matter of will so much as trust. I try… — Paulette Alden Copy Share Image
Writing helps us heal in certain way, but it doesn't make the experience of thinking about writing that occasion any less painful.… — Sarah Gerard Copy Share Image
“There’s more mystical nonsense written about the process of writing than almost anything. Inspiration, genius, “the muse.” So I want to lay… — Charles Finch Copy Share Image
A book is not necessarily made of paper. A book is not necessarily made to be read on a Kindle. A book… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Man no longer dreams over a book in which a soft voice, a constant companion, observes, exhorts, or sighs with him through… — Loren Eiseley Copy Share Image
That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
Life's tallest order is to keep the feelings up, to make two dollars' worth of euphoria go the distance. And life can't… — Stanley Elkin Copy Share Image
I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones'… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
“Only a reader can understand how a book with 100 pages can be too long and one with 1000 pages can be too short.” — Sofija Copy Share Image
I have a tendency sometimes to get too logical with what I'm writing, just because I want it to be kind of… — John Cleese Copy Share Image
The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Which is strange - I've always thought of myself as someone who writes out of difficulty. And I did do that, but… — Maggie Smith Copy Share Image
If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board… — Rex Stout Copy Share Image
My office is just overflowing with books about witches and books about 17th-century animal husbandry and agricultural farm tools from the period. — Robert Eggers Copy Share Image
As every bookie knows instinctively, a number such as reliability - a qualitative rather than a quantitative measure - is needed to… — Hans Christian von Baeyer Copy Share Image
“Good books are over your head; they would not be good for you if they were not. And books that are over… — Mortimer J. Adler Copy Share Image
“The point of reading is not reading but living. Reading helps you live with greater appreciation, keener insight and heightened emotional awareness.” — Steve Leveen Copy Share Image
“It smelled like a library – the initial whiff of something bitter, followed by the scent lingering in every book there –… — Kimberly Krey Copy Share Image
Books are true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and… — William Ellery Channing Copy Share Image
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading… — Franz Kafka Copy Share Image
I am not comfortable with abstract writing, stories that look like essays: you have to see, I need to see. — Don DeLillo Copy Share Image
The only reason I write at all is because I am going through, and growing through, something in my life I want… — Daphne Oz Copy Share Image
“A life is similar to a book. Some chapters are boring,a few emotional, a handful memorable,others saddening,one or two thoughtful and many… — Elizabeth Adeniyi Copy Share Image
They've got this house style which is writer driven. I heard of one person who sent his script in, and Karen Berger… — Eddie Campbell Copy Share Image
I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write. — Elizabeth Gilbert Copy Share Image
I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read. — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and there discovered was a whole world to… — Oprah Winfrey Copy Share Image
The limited fictions used to sell the lives of public figures often form a cloudy chiaroscuro that covers their true humanity. — William J. Mann Copy Share Image
I always had a superstitious fear of setting up a too well-designed writing place and then finding that the writing had absconded. — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
