After 20 years of writing academic prose and lectures, it seems very familiar and straightforward to me. Writing a novel for the… — Deborah Harkness Copy Share Image
As for most writers, language is vital for me: a writer's ability to render a fictional world - characters, landscape, emotions -… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
Always have a book at hand, in the parlor, on the table, for the family; a book of condensed thought and striking… — Tryon Edwards Copy Share Image
Read good books. Read bad books - and figure out why you don't like them. Then don't do it when you write.… — Patricia Briggs Copy Share Image
“This is incredible. This is quite amazing because who you're honoring tonight is not only myself but the ghost of a lot… — Ray Bradbury Copy Share Image
You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences… — F. Scott Fitzgerald Copy Share Image
Writers displace their anxiety on to the tools of the trade. It's better to say that you haven't got the right pencil… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“I've squeezed as many bookcases in this tiny space as possible. Being surrounded by books and magazines makes me feel calm. It… — Angelo Surmelis Copy Share Image
Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them…digest them. Let them… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
“Every writer dreams of a perfect language. Every writer dreams of a language that obeys, that comes to heel. For some this… — Helen Marshall Copy Share Image
“Oscar always said that books are truly our best friends. He said that they never think poorly of us and that they… — Erica Sehyun Song Copy Share Image
“I have never met a writer who didn't need an editor, and an editor without a writer is a person without a… — Alex Beam Copy Share Image
“Some writers are seasoned raconteurs with an endless supply of stories and quips and one-liners. Others are reclusive and introverted souls who… — John Grisham Copy Share Image
Now, as a reader, you shouldn't feel the decisions the writer makes about this DNA, or it would be boring beyond belief.… — Mary Kay Zuravleff Copy Share Image
Alethea Black can drop you into a dream with a single sentence, then convince you it's real. Her characters' best hopes and… — Ralph Lombreglia Copy Share Image
All of the insights that we might ever need have already been captured by others in books. The important question is this:… — Jim Rohn Copy Share Image
What I ask of [the writer] is not to ignore the reality and the fundamental problems that exist. The world's hunger, the… — Jean-Paul Sartre Copy Share Image
“Fiction does something unique in that it takes us out of our heads and puts us into other people's heads. And I… — Neil Gaiman Copy Share Image
Solitary reading will enable a man to stuff himself with information, but without conversation his mind will become like a pond without… — William Matthews Copy Share Image
The most reward experience is having another writer come up to you and say that they started writing because they read my… — Michael Scott Copy Share Image
Personally, I am always more impressed by simplicity, clarity; it is the mark of a writer who knows his subject well and… — Noah Lukeman Copy Share Image
I have suffered, like other writers, from indolence, irresolution, distaste to my work, absence of 'inspiration,' and all that: but I have… — Harriet Martineau Copy Share Image
Really, in the end, the only thing that can make you a writer is the person that you are, the intensity of… — Santha Rama Rau Copy Share Image
This is mainly because I spend a lot of time writing and so don't have much time to read; I hate to… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
It never occurred to me when I was young that I could be an author. That would be like saying, "I want… — Rainbow Rowell Copy Share Image
Long before the idea of a writer's conference was a glimmer in anyone's eye, writers learned by reading the work of their… — Francine Prose Copy Share Image
Writers tend to write stories as a kind of holiday between novels, or as preliminary steps towards a novel. Stories just don't… — James Lasdun Copy Share Image
“I left the bank because they wouldn’t deposit my cheque of poems. So I went to the store, but they didn’t accept… — Kamand Kojouri Copy Share Image
Ever since I started writing in college, I have, save for a few short breaks here and there, been working away on… — Laura van den Berg Copy Share Image
Now I rewrite more and more severely, and I take great pleasure in cutting thousands of words out of first drafts; I… — Ramsey Campbell Copy Share Image
“Senor Sempere believed that God lives, to a smaller or greater extent, in books, and that is why he devoted his life… — Carlos Ruiz Zafón Copy Share Image
I'm not a wildly gifted person; I don't play an instrument or speak another language or have great accomplishments in another field,… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was 'Crime and Punishment'. I put the thing down after reading… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative,… — Jane Rule Copy Share Image
Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books.… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
My parents would frisk me before family events. Before weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, and what have you. Because if they didn't, then… — Neil Gaiman Copy Share Image
As a reader, coming to my reading as a writer immersed in fairytales, I can't help but notice in so many stories,… — Kate Bernheimer Copy Share Image
You told us over and over that you don’t think you could live without books, but the ironic thing is, you’d probably… — Wendelin Van Draanen Copy Share Image
“I have three copies of the first edition, which sold in double figures, speaking loosely; there was a moment when Blond's 'Lord… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
“Writing is so much more problematic than drawing, full of moral pitfalls, ambiguity, public responsibility. If you record a day of your… — Kate Millett Copy Share Image
![“What I ask of [the writer] is not to ignore the reality and the fundamental problems that exist. The world's hunger, the atomic threat, the alienation of man, I am astonished that they do not color all our literature.” quote by Jean-Paul Sartre](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/81f/jean-paul-sartre-220_alienation_what-i-ask-of-the-writer-is-not-to-ignor_709147.png)
