Writer Quotes · Page 328

I spent four of my five years at Stanford writing a novel I was unable to sell.

— Scott Turow

“Reading expands the mind; just like a book, open it.”

— self

“Maelyn smiled. If books could have litters, she'd be just as happy.”

— Anita Valle

I have a writer's memory which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.

— Amy Tan

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

— Henry Miller

“How do you explain to a nonreader that books aren't just things but treasured friends? Companions?”

— Laura Jensen Walker

It does feel great to be writing, but the process is sometimes excruciating.

— Carrie Brownstein

“Writing is like going underwater - thank you for being there when I come back up.”

— Ali Shaw

I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their…

— Rick Bass

You know that something is really well written when you have to think so little about the words that are coming out…

— Tom Weston-Jones

When anybody tells you something about writing, somebody will tell you something completely different and they will also be right

— Melvyn Bragg

As a writer, you have to be mean and vicious. Use the pen as your gun. Sometimes the people you write about…

— Hallgrimur Helgason

Writing works when publications are writing and serving the best interest of their users; numbers are good yardstick but not a way…

— Om Malik

When I was a kid, I liked books that just seemed so dense you could lose yourself in them for a whole…

— Chris Ware

I've just finished my next collection, Possible Side Effects, and I'm now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as…

— Augusten Burroughs

I must warn you that the books I like are not necessarily the ones I think are the best. I like them…

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Make sure your family and loved ones don’t interrupt you during your writing time. If you’re a lawyer or doctor, friends don’t…

— Douglas Preston

I could say that in the essay, as it has developed historically, success is determined by the writer's ability to express, through…

— Vijay Seshadri

“The most dangerous part of lending books lies in the returning. At such times, friendships hang by a thread. I look for…

— Anatole Broyard

I have a total responsibility to the reader. The reader has to trust me and never feel betrayed. There's a double standard…

— Jonathan Santlofer

If I see Marian Keyes' books or Patricia Scanlan's books given more prominence than mine in the bookstore, I'll move mine to…

— Maeve Binchy

“But I don't want to write my own fiction,' Cath said, as emphatically as she could. 'I don't want to write my…

— Rainbow Rowell

I'm always writing ideas down and then I stick em in my pocket and put em in that folder so I don't…

— Lucinda Williams

Well, certainly I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they…

— John le Carre

I'm very interested in how we take ownership of our own stories and our own lives.

— Derren Brown

“The first part of my plan is to write until I die. The second part is to not die.”

— Will Carver

“Writing is a lonely process, but should not be done alone.”

— M.E. Jakobsen

“He would think God was a dyke librarian, and he would know the fear of her.”

— Joe Hill

“if you are satisfied with your first draft you are not writing, you are excreting”

— Jennifer Ross

“Reading kept him alive,’ she said, ‘right till the end.”

— Robert Macfarlane

... if fiction does not show us a better life than reality, what is the good of it?

— Amelia Barr

What is more important in a library than anything else-than everything else-is the fact that it exists.

— Archibald MacLeish

“Every book was a door; every page a new place to hide.”

— Drew Magary

“You can’t think yourself out of a writing block; you have to write yourself out of a thinking block.”

— John Rogers

Friends are like books, some are Fiction and some are Nonfiction.

— Anonymous

You need to write about something that you really know about or you deeply connect with. Don't fake it.

— Rajkumar Hirani

I think fiction writers write what they do because no one else has written it and they want to read it.

— Alan Cheuse

When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.

— Calvin Trillin

“There is no greater feeling than to have found my passion in writing.”

— Robin Murphy

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

— Erica Jong