Librarians open up the world. Knowledge is useless if you don't even know where to begin to look. How much more can… — Patrick Ness Copy Share Image
“I am still actively engaged at the job I like best, which is working with authors and promoting them. But, at this… — John C. Farrar Copy Share Image
“Nonfiction at its best is like fashioning a cabinet. It can be elegant and very beautiful but it can never be sculpture.… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
It's not even my job to educate, but what I do is try to facilitate by creating a book that works on… — Graeme Base Copy Share Image
One of the nice things about the world of filmmaking is that you make friends in the business. Sometimes directors feel a… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
Writers shouldn’t underestimate the difficulty of what they’re doing, and they should treat it with great seriousness. You’re doing something that really… — David Guterson Copy Share Image
“For me, personally, the point of writing is to connect me to this world, to my fellow humans. We are all miles… — Matt Haig Copy Share Image
“At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Freedom to tell any story I want, with all the imaginary tools of my trade, is why I love writing novels. I… — Marjorie Liu Copy Share Image
Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it's all wild emotion and… — Ben H. Winters Copy Share Image
FBI Girl is a gorgeous, sumptuous book. Conlon-McIvor takes a subject (herself and her family) that might have sunk in other hands,… — Alexandra Fuller Copy Share Image
“Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer.… — Natalie Goldberg Copy Share Image
I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano’s class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia.… — Mario Vargas Llosa Copy Share Image
It's hard for children's authors to be accepted when they try to write adult books. J.K. Rowling is the exception because people… — R. L. Stine Copy Share Image
I confess that I am a messy, disorganized and impatient reader: if the book doesn't grab me in the first 40 pages,… — Isabel Allende Copy Share Image
So I have probably 1,200 little bits of paper with notes, which when the Ambien really starts to kick in, don't really… — Chris Martin Copy Share Image
Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I always figure there are novels and short stories, and in those, I'm God. No one tells me what to do. I… — Neil Gaiman Copy Share Image
Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you'll mostly fall flat on your face, because it's impossible to… — Wilbur Smith Copy Share Image
Maybe it stems from my newspaper-reporting days, but I took notes the whole time - getting the call, how I felt. As… — Jennifer Weiner Copy Share Image
I was given the ability to create stories and characters. That's my part of the long chain of writers, publishers, agents, booksellers,… — Karl Marlantes Copy Share Image
I think there is no way to write about being alone. To write is to tell something to somebody to communicate to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession.… — Niyi Osundare Copy Share Image
Reviewers try to square the antics of a writer's life with the antics in the fiction. Even satirical verbal play is too… — Joanna Scott Copy Share Image
“Admittedly any such dyadic comparison risks oversimplifying the menu of eligible strategies, but the risk is lessened when one bears in mind… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
I like the desperado aspect of essays, the free lance, that mercenary kind of thing, so I just do it, without asking… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
“Despite the fact that he loves books and owns a bookstore, A.J. does not particularly care for writers. He finds them to… — Gabrielle Zevin Copy Share Image
My books happen. They tend to blast in from nowhere, seize me by the throat, and howl 'Write me! Write me now!'… — Robin McKinley Copy Share Image
The older I'm getting, the more I'm getting a writer's block or something. It's harder to come up with an idea that… — Alex G Copy Share Image
If you're somebody who writes songs or writes fiction, a writer that people pay for your opinion in any way, you shouldn't… — Jason Isbell Copy Share Image
A man who reads a book for no particular profit becomes, while he reads, a gentleman, a man of leisure, a dandy… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Readers, on the other hand, have at least 7.5 books going all the time. Actually, the number of books a reader takes… — Calvin Miller Copy Share Image
You must know everything well before you can know what to discard. You must cover pages with material you will not finally… — Dorothy Bryant Copy Share Image
When I am teaching, I first give out Tolstoy's 'Childhood,' his first published book. It is so transparent. It gives you exactly… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
“Everything I have written up to now is trifling compared to that which I would like to write and would write with… — Anton Chekhov Copy Share Image
Héctor Tobar's accomplished first novel affords a perspective that is overdue and urgently needed in North American literature- -an insider's vision of… — Stuart Dybek Copy Share Image
“The one she needed most kept aloof, for she was, to hear her talk, changing her selves as quickly as she drove… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
During every book, I have a nervous breakdown. Usually it's about two thirds of the way through the book - I'm just… — Andrew Sean Greer Copy Share Image
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image