Writer Quotes · Page 342

“Asking me if I like reading is like asking me if I like breathing.”

— Anonymus

There's a problem with narratives. Most that spring to mind are fictional.

— Howard Jacobson

I'm not the fastest writer. I can't just crank out ideas that are good enough.

— Amy Lee

I write every day when I'm at home - trying to catch up with correspondence.

— Colin Dexter

In writing, I search for believability, simplicity and emotional impact.

— Hal David

I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day.

— Mary Oliver

There ain't nothing that breaks up homes, country and nations like somebody publishing their memoirs

— Will Rogers

“The library is the only place where I don’t have to try to fit in. It’s effortless.”

— Donna Cooner

Writing is an incredibly creatively empowering experience for me. It is the place where nobody tries to control what I'm doing.

— Anonymous

I cannot write to anyone outside myself--if I tried, it would be a horrible story, flat and lifeless. I write to myself.…

— Shannon Hale

As publishers focus on blockbusters, they steadily lose interest in little-known authors from other countries.

— Stephen Kinzer

“We find little in a book but what we put there,’ Joseph Joubert said. ‘But in great books, the mind finds room…

— A.C. Grayling

The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of…

— Zadie Smith

I never wanted to be a literary writer. I wanted to be an entertainer. All I wanted was to give what a…

— M.C. Beaton

I don't think you can write from a reactive place. I think you just write the thing you want to write about,…

— Jesse Andrews

“I've worked really hard to make myself a better writer. I don't think writing is something that comes to people naturally; it…

— Nathan Nixon

Throughout my life, there's just periods when I write and periods when I don't. I don't feel like anything's really blocked. It's…

— Mark Kozelek

I am passionate about reading, for myself and for kids. Our future as a compassionate, productive, healthy society is rooted in our…

— Emma Walton Hamilton

“Lina had never seen anyone so disorganized as the doctor. She peeked into the medicine room once when the doctor was out…

— Jeanne DuPrau

“There’s a bookcase lining an entire wall. By the window there’s an armchair and another lamp, with a stack of books illuminated…

— Sally Thorne

“I would also write down my fears and look at them. When fears stay stuck inside your head, your imagination can go…

— Blake Mycoskie

All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's…

— Philip Pullman

All great writers have, of course, an atmosphere in which they seem most at their ease and at their best; a mood…

— Virginia Woolf

“Note, too, that fiction writers inevitably catch their central characters in situations involving ambiguities, not contradictories. The marshal in High Noon was…

— Eugene L. Lowry

You don't turn out as many books as I did then by sitting around, being cozy with the family.

— Wilbur Smith

My passion is writing, but it is also a fight because I still see home as a woman's duty.

— Angeles Mastretta

That's the way I work. I get it all plotted in my mind, and then I write it down.

— Ann Patchett

I've always loved to read. But sometimes I go for a year without reading, because I forget to.

— Norah Jones

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.

— Joyce Carol Oates

My books always make the best-seller lists in Wolf Hole, Arizona, and Hanksville, Utah.

— Edward Abbey

...I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.

— Octavia Butler

For me, writing essays, prose and fiction is a great way to be self-indulgent.

— Diablo Cody

It's a job. I entertain my readers. I get up in the morning, and I start typing.

— Clive Cussler

Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.

— E. M. Forster

Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

— Sholem Asch

Most of my early work was done on typewriter. And the only way to iterate drafts was to re-type it.

— Seanan McGuire

That's a very good way to learn the craft of writing - from reading.

— William Faulkner

no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it.

— Jacques Barzun

I've always found the second book in a series is the hardest to write.

— Rick Riordan

A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.

— Samuel Johnson