Writer Quotes · Page 370

I just did what any writer does, tried to listen to the characters, whether they're 18 or 80.

— Ol Parker

Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.

— Stephen Sondheim

About 40 years ago I had an experience where I wrote a tract.

— Tim LaHaye

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

— Christopher Morley

...I will not allow books to prove any thing." "But how shall we prove any thing?" "We never shall.

— Jane Austen

Life is like a book, but only you can choose what it's about.

— Brielle Amos

I was writing from the time I was 12 years old, but I originally wanted to be a novelist.

— Christopher McQuarrie

“Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.”

— Annie Dillard

As an actor, the thing I want to do to an audience is always be ahead of them and always be surprising…

— Steve Bisley

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

— Joyce Carol Oates

I get intrigued by a first lin and I write to find out why it means something to me. You make discoveries…

— E. L. Doctorow

“Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute…

— Mark Slouka

“What is imagination? I don’t believe in fiction. In my mind everything comes from a part of who a writer is.”

— Anonymous

In the case of 'Goon Squad,' which sold slowly for a long time despite the good reviews, those 'best of 2010' lists…

— Jennifer Egan

I think one of the keys to better writing is releasing all of your ideas and to not be afraid. Dream big.…

— Adora Svitak

You can't know what a book is about until the very end. This is true of a book we're reading or writing.

— Lynda Barry

Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to…

— John Green

I pretty much always knew I wanted to be a writer. I was writing goofy stories when I was 7 or 8.…

— Ellen Potter

Tolkien was such a brilliant writer in so many ways. He was truly an inspiration. Many people don't realize just how much…

— Raymond Buckland

“It's a book in which one finds everything,' Stuart continues sagely. 'I cannot tell you the number of times I've opened its…

— Maya Lang

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me…

— Terry Pratchett

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is…

— Henry Miller

“Without a physical presence on the shelves, the Kindle books seemed slightly insubstantial. There was no equivalent of the satisfying cracked spine.…

— Linda Grant

My wife, the actress Megan Mullally, was an English major at Northwestern University and loves fiction. Like so many things in my…

— Nick Offerman

To write for a living, according to Mr. Whipple, is coquetting with starvation.

— Francis Alexander Durivage

“Books are the way to stretch out people's souls, and I won't have children with small souls.”

— Jodi Lynn Anderson

Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

— Patricia Reilly Giff

I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.

— Natalie Goldberg

I spend a lot of my time just looking at words and grammar and writing things down that I don't know.

— John Grant

When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think.

— Charles Lamb

“She was never without a good book close by, not even when she was lying in bed with nothing on her”

— Joseph Heller

“Maybe it's not about the journey but rather the way you imagine the journey when you read a book.”

— BeaOngjoco

“Secondhand books are full of mysteries, which is why I like them. Frederick”

— Cath Crowley

Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays

— E. B. White

“If you really have talent, you know, you'll go on writing - whatever people say to you.”

— Christopher Isherwood

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on.

— Philip Roth

“Writing is not a competition, or a fear. Writing is an art, a passion, a love.”

— Kirsty-Anne Still

It's usually quite easy to shrug and write something else instead.

— Charles Stross

“Give a monkey a stick and it will learn how to write.”

— Anthony T. Hincks

I'm a professional. So before I published any novels, I'd always been writing stories.

— Jess Walter