Writer Quotes · Page 390

We write because something inside says we must and we can no longer ignore that voice.

— Sheila Bender

I have more free time than a lot of individuals, so, instead of talking, I sometimes write.

— Wallace Shawn

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

— Joyce Carol Oates

To be a good writer... read a lot and write every day.

— Neil Gaiman

Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.

— Patti Smith

I think writing, my writing, is a species of mediumship. I become the person.

— Virginia Woolf

“Fictions are realities we don't think of, that are happening to people we know nothing about.”

— Sanhita Baruah

The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.

— Philip Roth

One novel that I think is an overriding influence in my life is 'All the King's Men,' the most beautiful book written…

— Andrew Gross

You really need to approach each book as if you have been a failure. . . . If you start to believe…

— Louise Erdrich

I picked up 'On Moral Fiction' in the bookstore and looked up myself in the index, but I didn't read it through.…

— John Updike

I could never have pictured myself writing a book when I was 25 years old. My mom was an English teacher but…

— Tony Dungy

Two things can make life meaningful: books and love. ...I already have books. Now I am setting off in search of love.

— Joel Dicker

I'm through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me… If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I…

— Ivan Turgenev

Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm…

— Virginia Woolf

Everybody says, TV is great, the writer has so much power. I'm still trying to convince myself that's true. When do the…

— Matthew Specktor

“This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of--please forgive me--wonder, of seeing things anew, things…

— Anne Lamott

“When The Journal of Words compiled its list of the one hundred best novels written in English, do you know that Pride…

— Michael Thomas Ford

Writing is an outward expression of instinctive insight that must be summoned from the vastly deep of our mysterious selves. Therefore, it…

— William Hughes Mearns

I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like…

— Mark Haddon

The way I feel about every book is this: you don't finish it, you abandon it. All of my books have in…

— Russell Banks

“Thus it has come about that our theoretical and critical literature, instead of giving plain, straightforward arguments in which the author at…

— Carl von Clausewitz

When you're writing a book, it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things [...] The…

— Roald Dahl

For writers: If you polish a book too much, it'll be flat and shiny and smooth--and not too interesting. It's the little…

— Lori Foster

Truth and fiction are so aptly mixed that all seems uniform and of a piece.

— Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon

The love of books is a love which requires neither justification, apology, nor defense.

— John Alfred Langford

I don't leave the house without a book, and I never watch television without one, either.

— Adriana Trigiani

“A novel is a made-up work about made-up people in a made-up place, all of which is very real.”

— Thomas C. Foster

It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.

— Erica Jong

I often feel like books find us for reasons, and we read them when we need them the most.

— Neil Patrick Harris

The longer one doesn't write, the more difficult it is to communicate.

— Indira Gandhi

“If one were happy, then one might stay in with a book, say, and not go out hunting for fun”

— Kathleen Rooney

Writing is primarily a sensuous and creative expression of life.

— Meridel Le Sueur

Writing is a private discipline, in a field of companions.

— Jonathan Lethem

The imprisoning of a writer is the same as the burning of a book.

— Joseph Brodsky

For me, a good YA novel is the best kind of comfort food.

— Hallie Ephron

Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism

— Anonymous

It's hard to build community around mediocre and mundane writing.

— Guy Kawasaki

When I see these guys write all this macho stuff I want to smash their heads.

— John Turturro

“For me, there is no separation. Writing is the center… But it’s all critical.”

— Christina Katz