Writer Quotes · Page 280

“ There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading.”

— Anonymous

I just write what I think is good and keep it at a thousand words.

— Henry Rollins

[On the writers she admires:] I prefer dead writers, because I don't see them at parties.

— Fran Lebowitz

“...some writers closet themselves - I write wherever I am because that's where life is happening ...”

— John Geddes

“Nothing that happens to a writer--however happy, however tragic--is ever wasted.”

— P.D. James

Literature plays a huge role in examining difficult real-life issues.

— Angie Thomas

Writing a book is quite an undertaking and I wouldn't want to do it just to do it.

— Laverne Cox

“People who read books," he went on, "tend to be dispensable. Extremely.”

— Ninni Holmqvist

You can't teach people to write well. Writing well is something God lets you do or declines to let you do.

— Kurt Vonnegut

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

— Henry David Thoreau

Reading 'Search Sweet Country' is like reading a dream, and indeed, at times, it feels like the magical landscapes of writers like…

— Uzodinma Iweala

The one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes.…

— Mark Haddon

Short stories consume you faster. They're connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough…

— Ali Smith

I have known writers who paid no damned attention whatever to the rules of grammar and rhetoric and somehow made the language…

— Red Smith

If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the…

— Chaim Potok

I never bought the excuse of not having time to write. If you really want to do it, you're either going to…

— Harlan Coben

My parents would frisk me before family events, and find the book, and lock it in the car. And then be disappointed…

— Neil Gaiman

That’s why you have to write your book right now, if that’s what you want to do. If you wait until you…

— Stephen Elliott

As a writer, it's a great narrative tool to have that character who is slightly detached but at the same time observant…

— Dinaw Mengestu

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the author intended a symbol to be there, because the job of reading is not to understand…

— John Green

I think people do look to writers to tell the truth in a way that nobody else quite will, not politicians or…

— John Updike

You know how some people will say to writers, "Why don't you just write a romance novel that sells a bunch of…

— Lucy Corin

Do you want to do this thing? Sit down and do it. Are you not writing? Keep sitting there. Does it not…

— Ann Patchett

“There’s a vast underground network for goodness at work in this world—a web of people who’ve put reading at the center of…

— George Saunders

“Don't waste your tremendous voice writing messages in the sand.”

— Lorin Morgan-Richards

Writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised every day: The more you write, the easier it becomes.

— Jane Green

I don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself.

— J. D. Salinger

“Every book tells a story, so you better be ready for the adventure.”

— Jessica Kinney

The urge to write one's autobiography, so I have been told, overtakes everyone sooner or later.

— Agatha Christie

“Out of the millions who write, only very few manage to create an impact.”

— Saru Singhal

If life was a book I would read it all then re-read the amazing chapters.

— Damien Cantrell

“You don’t read to exercise the mind but to take voyages”

— john j geddes

“And we’re going to have all the books in the world to read and when we go on trips we can take…

— Ernest Hemingway

I suspect that every writer is secretly writing for someone.

— Brewster Ghiselin

If you continually write and read yourself as a fiction, you can change what's crushing you.

— Jeanette Winterson

“There's no reason, to talk about the books I read. But still I do.”

— Morrissey

“Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose.”

— Joyce Carol Oates

We read to find ourselves, more fully and more strangely than otherwise we could hope to find.

— Harold Bloom

Don't dumb down; always write for your top five percent of readers.

— Martin Amis

I've matured as a writer and human being. I've got some wisdom under my belt.

— Carlene Carter