Writer Quotes · Page 310

Madam, you ask me how I compose. I compose sitting down.

— Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library?

— Italo Calvino

All characters are based on elements of a writer's personal experience.

— Robert Holdstock

If I could go upstairs and write every day, I would be happy. I don't need recreation.

— Henry Petroski

I have two rules for a great book: make me think and make me smile.

— Adam Grant

Fiction needs writers and readers, and writers should cultivate both.

— Laura Lippman

I pick up my pen. It flows. A building appears. There it is. There is nothing more to say.

— Oscar Niemeyer

I love a good book. I'm not a club girl. I like hanging out and reading my books.

— Madelaine Petsch

I've turned my back on fancy parties and red carpets. I'm a writer, and if I did that, I'd never get anything…

— Pete Doherty

A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can.

— William Faulkner

What you can do with a short story that you can't do with a novel is punch someone in the gut, in…

— Peter Orner

Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I…

— Blaise Pascal

Telling stories, making them come alive is what makes me come alive. So I try to live a life where sharing this…

— Soko

In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is

— Nancy Kress

As to the number of novels I've abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that's a…

— Mark Haddon

Over a four-month period, I sat down and wrote every day. And then there was a novel, and all of a sudden,…

— Melissa Marr

I think that if you are a serious writer, you are almost obligated to provide the intelligent average reader with something that…

— Michel Faber

“(Out of the Shadow is) Exceptional…Meticulously plotted, beautifully paced, its an intelligent, fascinating story that draws you in. I couldn't put it…

— J.S. Winn

Writing is like wrestling; you are wrestling with ideas and with the story. There is a lot of energy required. At the…

— Chinua Achebe

I don't view my memory as accurate or static - and, in autobiographical fiction, my focus is still on creating an effect,…

— Tao Lin

Writing is how I find out what I believe and what I care most deeply about. It's how I sort through the…

— Pico Iyer

When you're 8 years old, and you've become subconsciously familiar with the layout and design of Black Sparrow books, and you know…

— Patrick deWitt

“In the real world, speechwriters are more like personal trainers than puppet masters. They can help you present the most attractive version…

— David Litt

My readers often tell me that what they admire about my books is my ability to write from so many points of…

— Julia Glass

No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.

— Wole Soyinka

“Write about something you know. Try to leave your readers better off than they were before.”

— John R. Erickson

I achieved perfection, my type of perfection - visual storytelling. Storytelling was my style.

— Jack Kirby

I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.

— Mickey Spillane

Writing is not a profession. It's a calling. It's almost holy.

— Jamaica Kincaid

I do want to say the process of writing a novel is riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing.

— Meg Wolitzer

Every time I wrote fiction, I was discouraged, and every time I wrote nonfiction, I was encouraged.

— Ron Chernow

Write a little bit every day, each day. Visit it, every day - in other words, show up for work.

— Richard Bausch

Writing has been a way of explaining to myself the things I do not understand.

— Rosario Castellanos

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

— Harper Lee

“trace me, then write things where your fingers stop”

— ehddah

The only difference between a published and unpublished writer is a tolerance for imperfection.

— Junot Diaz

I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.

— Joan Didion

Westernized Indians don't like my books and I tend not to like westernized Indians - so we're quits.

— Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

For me, writing is like being taken on a walk by a footnote: It's amazing where you end up.

— Ben Schott

A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is anonymous about it.

— Simone Weil