Novels–and memoirs–are perhaps the most comprehensive reports humans can deliver, of their private experiences, to other humans. In these terms there is… — Tao Lin Copy Share Image
“[...] as I have seen with other people whose sense of their work is vocational rather than pragmatic, my desire to write,… — Stephanie Dowrick Copy Share Image
“If you are in difficulties with a book,” suggested H. G. Wells, “try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour… — Ralph Keyes Copy Share Image
My first book was called, 'Mountain, Get Out of My Way,' where I did an autobiographical sketch, if you will, looking back… — Montel Williams Copy Share Image
In the war time many of the publishing houses were privately owned, a single publisher or a publisher and a few associates… — James Salter Copy Share Image
“With frightening suddenness he now began ripping the pages out of the book in handfuls and throwing them in the waste-paper basket.… — Roald Dahl Copy Share Image
If the purpose of literature is to illuminate human nature, the purpose of fantastic literature is to do that from a wider… — Jo Walton Copy Share Image
All over the world, there are libraries of a sort. They are among the most beautiful places on the earth, and they… — Brock Adams Copy Share Image
Complicated Grief was written in larger and more coherent (if disparate) shapes. The question was how they fit together. The mind is… — Laura Mullen Copy Share Image
“Think of it: a writer actually possesses the power to alter his past, to change what was once experienced as defeat into… — Franz Wright Copy Share Image
“Well, it would be helpful to not have to go through all of these in Braille," the man said. "I'm looking for… — Aubrey Rose Copy Share Image
It’s Fitzgerald’s thin-but-durable urge to affirm that finally makes Gatsby worthy of being our Great American Novel. Its soaring conclusion tells us… — Maureen Corrigan Copy Share Image
“Literature...describes a descent. First, gods. Then demigods. Then epic became tragedy: failed kings, failed heroes. Then the gentry. Then the middle class… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
You try to learn who you are. You work hard. You've either got it or you don't when it comes to writing… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
Crushed to earth and rising again is an author's gymnastic. Once he fails to struggle to his feet and grab his pen,… — Fannie Hurst Copy Share Image
I'm pretty hardcore. I stick exactly to what I'm doing. So I write a novel in one period, and then I'll write… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen… — Robin Hobb Copy Share Image
I have to be a freelance writer for the rest of my life, unless I get some kind of real lucky break.… — Harvey Pekar Copy Share Image
“It is the highest reward when a writer hears when a book written in doubt and solitude, has reached a human heart… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
“They are more real than the books on the shelves, books that are sketched with the barest hint of a line here… — Diane Setterfield Copy Share Image
“But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There… — Ernest Hemingway Copy Share Image
I do think reading is the best practice for writing, along with writing all the time. I actually never liked writing on… — Tavi Gevinson Copy Share Image
in a sense much great literature is subversive, since its very existence implies that what matters is art, imagination, and truth. In… — Alison Lurie Copy Share Image
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to… — Leo C Rosten Copy Share Image
“We do need to bring to our writing, over and over again, all the abundance we possess. To be able, to be… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“Books are the food of the soul. Good and wholesome food given to a hungry body will nourish it, but if the… — Anthony Mary Claret Copy Share Image
How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well… — Ernest Hemingway Copy Share Image
Books seem to me to be pestilent things, and infect all that trade in them...with something very perverse and brutal. Printers, binders,… — John Locke Copy Share Image
Both Proust and Joyce record the ways in which human perspectives can be transformed. In Portrait, Stephen Dedalus is constantly undergoing epiphanies,… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Composing on the typewriter, I find that I am sloughing off all my long sentences which I used to dote upon. Short,… — T. S. Eliot Copy Share Image
“This is the plot up to the moment when the writer leaves the woman still dolefully enmeshed in it, and, suitcase in… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“When a writer is able to experience the whole range of human emotions, from deep depressions to glorious highs, it creates a… — David Perry Copy Share Image
When I bought a collection of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, I returned home with a bright enthusiasm to begin the long march into… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“Have you ever been reading a book and found yourself having to pause for a second and read a certain part again… — Emily May Copy Share Image
I've never written a book with the intention of winning someone back or getting back at someone or anything like that. It's… — Jeffrey Brown Copy Share Image
“Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against… — Adam Zagajewski Copy Share Image
But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a… — Neil Gaiman Copy Share Image
Writing is like listening to a melody line in my head. Note by note, it knows where it wants to go. I… — Julia Cameron Copy Share Image
“There is an old-fashioned distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident, which must have cost many a smile… — Henry James Copy Share Image
![“[...] as I have seen with other people whose sense of their work is vocational rather than pragmatic, my desire to write, to understand things at a depth I can reach in no other way, pushes me to write and go on writing, even when my wants—for an easier or more sociable life, or one less exposed…” quote by Stephanie Dowrick](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/317/stephanie-dowrick-28632_life_as-i-have-seen-with-other-people-whose-s_271176.png)
