Writer Quotes · Page 290

The first time I read 'Leftovers,' I didn't get it at all.

— Ann Dowd

“... like a cat that crawls onto the page when you're trying to read.”

— Margaret Atwood

I'd read Up in the Old Hotel, and I wanted to do something with Mitchell's stuff for a long time.

— Stanley Tucci

“The goal is not to be famous. The goal is to write. And to love doing it every day.”

— C.G. Coppola

On some level, I think we want our reading self to represent our best self.

— Gabrielle Zevin

The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing.

— Ken MacLeod

“few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.

— John Steinbeck

“It must be a really great book because one can read it as a boy in one way, and then re-read it…

— C.S. Lewis

Writing is nearly always a matter of finding whatever your brain needs to trick it into being creative, and in my case,…

— Emma Donoghue

But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other…

— Anonymous

“She ran out of space for her libary some time ago, but instead of making the room larger she has opted to…

— Erin Morgenstern

But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency.…

— Anne Tyler

“If you're frightened of the countless number of books in the library, you'll never write anything, until you close your eyes and…

— Michael Bassey Johnson

I don't necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I'm trying to finish.

— Erica Jong

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they…

— W. H. Auden

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or…

— Virginia Woolf

If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there's too many choices what to write about. Just…

— Eddie Vedder

I truly believe that writing is a continuum--so the different genres and forms are simply stops along the same continuum. Different ideas…

— Chris Abani

Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having…

— David Guterson

I think writers would do better to consider that idea [to write to yourself], because you know yourself really well, and you…

— Donald Miller

“I am thus led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is…

— E.L. Doctorow

Writing is so hard… The first draft writing is so hard that sometimes in the beginning, before the work itself takes over,…

— Sophy Burnham

“They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands on…

— William Gaddis

In my writing classes, I don't outlaw any genre writing.

— Leni Zumas

“I don't write because I want to write. I do it because I have to. I just wish it was my day…

— Stephanie Michel

For me, writing is 75 percent procrastinating and 25 percent actually sitting down and working.

— Zooey Deschanel

By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it.

— Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers... that is a small population.

— Alan Lightman

I'm always trying to figure out ways to keep hold of memories. My one-sentence journal, for instance.

— Gretchen Rubin

I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind.

— Patrick Dennis

“Every reader his or her book. Every book its reader.”

— Anonymous

I write in longhand. I am accustomed to that proximity, that feel of writing. Then I sit down and type.

— James Salter

We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have this prejudice that trilogies are long, three-volume novels.

— William Gibson

Books are only but a mirror of what knowledge we desire, in our minds and in our hearts.

— Andrew Guzaldo

One should play and sweat. Life shouldn't be bogged down by books.

— Narendra Modi

literature is an instrument of a culture, not a summary of it.

— Cynthia Ozick

Are you a reader? If you aren't a reader, you might as well forget trying to be a writer.

— Wallace Stegner

Most of the time, we write something and then figure out who would be best to do it.

— Tim Heidecker