Writer Quotes · Page 335

Real life doesn't have to be convincing, but fiction does.

— Neil Gaiman

The scope of what I have to say determines the length of what I write.

— Edward M. Lerner

I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.

— Ann Patchett

I started writing to reassure myself that I was still all here.

— Lee Grant

“If a book is not alive in the writer's mind, it is as dead as year-old horse shit.”

— Stephen King

Writing is a matter of finding the appropriate balance of dinosaurs and sodomy

— Michael Swanwick

The publishing industry is stuck somewhere in the Jurassic era.

— Vantile Whitfield

I love reading. I'm fortunate enough to have signed books by Faulkner, Steinbeck, Thomas Pynchon.

— John Larroquette

Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from on generation to…

— Laurie Anderson

Sometimes you just have to move on and put that chapter of life in the past. Dont close the book, just turn…

— Anonymous

The ideal view for daily writing, hour for hour, is the blank brick wall of a cold-storage warehouse. Failing this, a stretch…

— Edna Ferber

“I loved books—not only the stories they contained, but the feel of them in my hands, the silk of the pages, the…

— Laurelin Paige

Writing, of course, it's not all in your head. Not talking about the 'manual' act of typing here either, but that, when…

— Stephen Graham Jones

“It is quite impossible to write a worth-while novel about a Jew or a Gentile or a Homosexual, for people refuse, unhappily,…

— James Baldwin

A writer ... whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation.

— John Dos Passos

“Book lovers, readers who cherish the feel, smell and look of the printed book are concerned about the demise of the printed…

— Daniel Alef

It's my belief that I was a writer - a very hardworking writer - well before I was published. I did care…

— Min Jin Lee

Like many a better one before me, I have gone down under the force of numbers, under the books and books and…

— Dorothy Parker

Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it's like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I…

— Robin Hobb

It's possible that I would have been better suited to being a penguin keeper. Starting out, I thought being a writer would…

— Scott Stossel

Writers get embarrassed sometimes in talking about how much fun writing can be, but drafting is often really enjoyable. Often, you're tumbling…

— Karen Russell

My ambition was to embrace those general qualities that Ernest Hemingway, a former newspaperman, once said should be present in all good…

— Pete Hamill

I never considered myself a writer. I'm a teacher. In a way, I feel kind of... kind of guilty for all the…

— Allan Bloom

The manufacturers of mechanical typewriters believed that they had developed sufficiently when they introduced electric typewriters. Then came the PC, and the…

— Norbert Reithofer

'The Outsiders' died on the vine being sold as a drugstore paperback.

— S. E. Hinton

“I climb into my characters’ heads and live there while I write.”

— Catherine Cruzan

A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse.

— Edward Abbey

I'm just corny enough to like to have a story hit me over the heart.

— Walt Disney

“I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.”

— Evelyn Beatrice Hall

A good preface must be the root and the square of the book at the same time.

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

But the first published thing I did was a detective story, detective novel, and I did that on my own.

— Peter Shaffer

Life isn't like coursework, baby. It's one damn essay crisis after another.

— Boris Johnson

The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.

— Sloan Wilson

You never know what to expect when you're a writer visiting a movie set.

— Bryan Burrough

Writing is easy. Just sit in front of a typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out drop by drop.

— Red Smith

“Writing is an intimate transaction between two people, conducted on paper...”

— William Zinsser

If a rating is bad in another sport, do you see a writer say, 'This sport's over?' No.

— Dana White

While you're writing, you can't concentrate nearly as well on what the speaker is saying.

— Marilyn vos Savant

Back to work. If I’m [writing] I’m not thinking about the crazy.

— Faith Hunter

Structure is, for me, the most fun challenge about writing novels.

— Heidi Julavits