Writer Quotes · Page 285

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

— Alexandre Desplat

I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.

— John Darnielle

A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play;

— Charlotte Bronte

A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.

— Irwin Shaw

“This first book’s for everyone, though almost no one wants it or would know how to read it.”

— China Miéville

George Orwell is a pinnacle writer, for his combination of moral insight and literary writing.

— Atul Gawande

Book burnings. Always the forerunners. Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.

— Geraldine Brooks

A writer should not so much write as embroider on paper; the work should be painstaking, laborious.

— Anton Chekhov

I'm not sure I would have ever decided to try to write when I was forty-five if I hadn't already gotten that…

— Donald Ray Pollock

Maybe I'm not the right person to do it... but I've learned that I have some power to help stories be told…

— Jon M. Chu

“Writing is one method of dealing with being human or wanting to suicide cause in order to write you kill yourself at…

— Kathy Acker

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all - make us laugh, think, cry and cheer - preferably in…

— Madeleine Albright

There's only one ball game for any writer, and it's to keep you turning the pages. That's the whole ball game. That's…

— Mike Lupica

“A writer need not be bound by flat statement like "It was a rough sea," when verbs like tumble and roil and…

— Rebecca McClanahan

All writers of fiction will at some point find themselves abandoning a piece of work - or find themselves putting it aside,…

— Martin Amis

Certain books seem to be written, not that we might learn from them, but in order that we might see how much…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The great lesson I get from 'Moby-Dick' is that when the times are bad, when there is great foreboding, there are still…

— Nathaniel Philbrick

Whence shall come the new barbarians? Go through the squalid quarters of great cities, and you may see, even now, their gathering…

— Anonymous

“Laura thought Bell would have a few things to say to Pynchon. And Laura had a few things to say to Bell,…

— L.L. Barkat

... I must begin at whatever pace is possible, to work on the book of my own that i vaguely keep assuming…

— Diane Arbus

I wonder, what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the…

— Michael Ende

The ecological impact of book manufacture and traditional book marketing - I think that should really be considered. We have this industry…

— William Gibson

Maybe the best thing to do with favorite books is to leave them be: to achieve such exalted position means that they…

— Nick Hornby

Writers take words seriously-perhaps the last professional class that does-and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors…

— John Updike

“I write because words swim around in my head like unruly tadpoles until I do”

— Maureen Tuohy

I read constantly. If I don't have a good book, I'm beside myself.

— Gail Godwin

Writing is the only way I know to demand justice from an uncaring universe.

— Dorothy Allison

“Work often gets in the way of more important things, like writing.”

— Paul West

Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows.

— George Frideric Handel

I number my drafts, and by the time a book is done, I'll have 75 or 80 drafts of some sections.

— Jennifer Egan

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read”

— Harper Lee

Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible

— Barack Obama

“I know I am a writer because until I’m writing I don’t know what I know.”

— Wayson Choy

“great book stands the test of time unlike my good self….”

— Douglas Adams

If ever I was feeling down I would go and write something. It's a form of escape.

— M. Night Shyamalan

Books make great gifts because they're everybody's favorite things.

— Julie Andrews

Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.

— Natalie Goldberg

“Fiction means never letting the pure truth get in the way of a good story.”

— Nathaniel Robert Winters

Most writers tend to get worse rather than better. I'm determined to be one that gets better.

— Edmund White

What's this business of being a writer. It's just putting one word after another.

— Irving Thalberg