I feel very protective in the first draft, when all the pieces are coming together. I work in a way that is… — Jill McCorkle Copy Share Image
“You would have to abandon the jig-saw kind of story and write a book about human beings for a change.’ ‘I’m afraid… — Dorothy L. Sayers Copy Share Image
Fiction writing was in my blood from a very young age, but I never considered writing as a real career. I thought… — James Rollins Copy Share Image
In fact, one of the things that I really love about literary fiction is that it's one of the few kinds of… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“I never used to write down all the ideas that occur to me while writing. I believed if I forgot them they… — Gabriel García Márquez Copy Share Image
“One last characteristic of the memoir that is important to recognize is one which also applies to essays, and which Georg Lukacs… — Judith Barrington Copy Share Image
An essay is something that tracks the evolution of a human mind. It tracks the evolution of a single consciousness in order… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
“A library was nothing without its people. You say library and there’s this iconoclastic image of an old-lady librarian telling people to… — Scott Douglas Copy Share Image
I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.'… — Maya Angelou Copy Share Image
“Tell your story. Don't try and tell the stories that other people can tell. Any starting writer starts out with other people's… — Neil Gaiman Copy Share Image
I do think that the idea of writer's block can be very self-defeating for most writers because it's taking a lot of… — Emily Barton Copy Share Image
For it is humanly certain that most of us remember very little of what we have read. To open almost any book… — Siegfried Sassoon Copy Share Image
“Books were everywhere, lined neatly on shelves that went from floor to ceiling. The ceiling was two stories high, with an upper… — Lisa Kleypas Copy Share Image
“Few pleasures, for the true reader, rival the pleasure of browsing unhurriedly among books: old books, new books, library books, other people's… — Aidan Chambers Copy Share Image
I would say it was [ifluence] all the Greeks and the Russian classics like [Lev] Tolstoy, [Andrey] Goncharov,[Fedor] Dostoyevsky, [Alexander] Pushkin, and… — Vera Nazarian Copy Share Image
I had a lot of great lakes of ignorance that I was up against, I would write what I knew in almost… — Rebecca Miller Copy Share Image
It had that comfortably sprung, lived-in look that library books with a lively circulation always get; bent page corners, a dab of… — Stephen King Copy Share Image
Here's the deal: You can't go in with the intent that, 'All right, we're gonna write another 'Free Bird' or 'What's Your… — Rickey Medlocke Copy Share Image
Reading reassures us that no matter how alone we might feel, there are many others - spread as wide as history itself… — Simon Van Booy Copy Share Image
“I do three drafts handwritten and then it's typed up... They are different from each other, they are hopefully improvements in the… — Clive Barker Copy Share Image
I've always been a mystery fan. My very first grown-up book, I distinctly remember going to the library and my mom helping… — Gillian Flynn Copy Share Image
From the opening lines, Sleeping with Schubert is a hilarious, whimsical romp through the looking glass of a great musical mystery. The… — Jonis Agee Copy Share Image
I write the books that I'm compelled to and I definitely learn things about the world when I write them, and I… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“The most important trait of a writer is an authentic voice. Writers have to have faith in their own voice, and their… — Anne Rice Copy Share Image
“My impression is that life—a big word, I know—inflicts themes on a writer through certain experiences that impress themselves on his consciousness… — Mario Vargas Llosa Copy Share Image
“For me, writing is about expression. About feeling something. So many of us feel trapped within our own heads, unable to tell… — J.A. Bullen Copy Share Image
It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“The times do not call for grassroots political activism, as if the next election might be enough to reverse a massive cultural… — Paul D. Miller Copy Share Image
Certainly one of the surprising truths of having a book published is realizing that your book is as open to interpretation as… — Marisha Pessl Copy Share Image
“Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it's impossible, it's like having a homework assignment every stinking day until… — Lewis Black Copy Share Image
He that loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study,… — Isaac Barrow Copy Share Image
In the tradition of Black Hawk Down, Malcolm MacPherson vividly brings to life this harrowing story of courage, pathos, and war at… — Jay Winik Copy Share Image
A lot of writers come from Harvard and such, and are rich, and they write under the misapprehension that poor people are… — Norm MacDonald Copy Share Image
Then, of course, there are those sad occasions when a poet or a writer has not grown, and one has to let… — James Laughlin Copy Share Image
If you get trapped in your head and out of your body during the writing process, it's very easy to make wrong… — Soman Chainani Copy Share Image
I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I… — William Golding Copy Share Image
I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is… — Ray Bradbury Copy Share Image
We got Arbitron diaries at my house in the 1980s, when the family was down to just my mother and me, and… — Hank Stuever Copy Share Image
I write from the place of inquiry. The first draft is a discovery period to see what I know and what I… — Terry Tempest Williams Copy Share Image
And what happened was, it's the same thing an older, more successful writer of ficition might say to a student: write about… — Larry Coryell Copy Share Image