Writer Quotes · Page 193

A careful first draft is a failed first draft

— Patricia Hampl

“Writing a novel is a trek.”

— Erin Summerill

Writing is my primary way of expressing myself.

— Annie Baker

Write something good that the people like.

— Julie Plec

Life does often get in the way of one's reading.

— Helen Simonson

Making a book is such a big enterprise.

— V. S. Naipaul

“Fiction is life by design.”

— Mary Kittredge

I'm a writer, so I like nuances.

— Zoya Akhtar

I think a lot of time, I'm just writing my worst fears.

— Phoebe Waller-Bridge

I have been writing since I was old enough to spell. I have never considered not writing.

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I find I always have to write something on a steamed mirror.

— Elaine Dundy

Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose.

— Steven Pinker

If you don't have obsessions, don't write. my characters are obsessed.

— Marguerite Young

I always like stories where the egg ends up on my face.

— Rob Lowe

I like English, and I like writing essays, and that kind of stuff.

— Abigail Breslin

I never finished any of my early stories. They were all beginnings, an endless number of beginnings.

— George R. R. Martin

I have a day job, which means my family isn't dependent on the writing income. So if I have an idea I…

— Jim C. Hines

The best I can do is, it's like a 'ding!' You're writing, and then something starts falling into place, and you hear…

— Judith Viorst

(about Kindles) I have one and I use it most nights. I always imagine the books staring and whispering, Traitor!

— Robin Sloan

I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.

— Mel Brooks

“He wanted to run through the stacks, pick at the books, sample them one after the other, climb the stacks to their…

— Lavie Tidhar

'Carrie' was a pretty big-budget movie at a real studio, with a director that had already done a bunch of things and…

— P. J. Soles

Every writer has something to say, but those writers whose works endure have dared to say something about the things that frighten…

— Holly Lisle

Words and sentences are subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision.

— Barrett Wendell

To my mind there is nothing so beautiful or so provocative as a secondhand book store...To me it is astonishing and miraculous…

— Lionel Barrymore

I like to write short stories more because I never met a writer who wasn't lazy. And a short story is, by…

— Stephen King

I read for three things; first, to know what the world has done the last twenty-four hours, and is about to do…

— Henry Ward Beecher

“Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look…

— Gabrielle Zevin

“I have a hardcore attitude: a “self-published, ghost-written book” is wrong because the concept behind self publishing is that you have knowledge…

— Guy Kawasaki

More than this, I believe that the only lastingly important form of writing is writing for children. It is writing that is…

— Sonya Hartnett

You can tell a book is real when your heart beats faster. Real books make you sweat. Cry, if no one is…

— Laurie Halse Anderson

When I was young - like, young young - I would read all the time. I would read when I was walking…

— Josh Gondelman

When I give a speech, I tell it like a story.

— Brad Parscale

I'm not an actress. I'm a writer.

— Emily V. Gordon

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.

— Samuel Johnson

Without the library, you have no civilization.

— Ray Bradbury

“Why ride a cowboy when you can ride a librarian?”

— Alice Clayton

Most novelists write about twisted lives.

— Tom Robbins

Writers will be judged by what they write.

— Raymond Carver

“Writing is the equivalent to a striptease.”

— Kit Yan