Writer Quotes · Page 391

“When it comes to writing, clarity trumps all rules.”

— C.E.McLean

Libraries: Here is where people, one frequently finds, lower their voices, and raise their minds.

— Richard Armour

“Like people would ever want to read books on an electronic screen.”

— Anonymous

A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.

— E. B. White

It is a sure evidence of a good book if it pleases us more and more as we grow older.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

As I keep saying, fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was.

— Arundhati Roy

No time is ever wasted if you have a book along as a companion.

— Marian Wright Edelman

“Life can't be divided into chapters...only minutes.”

— Colleen Hoover

Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing,…

— Irvine Welsh

“We can live in a society founded on the book and yet not read, or we can live in a society where…

— Alberto Manguel

“[Literature is] the best way of telling the truth; it’s a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth…

— Julian Barnes

“The year after How to Read a Book was published, a parody of it appeared under the title How to Read Two…

— Mortimer J. Adler

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test…

— Toni Morrison

“This story was a story of our time. And a writer's attempts not to fathom his time amount but to sounding his…

— Louis Zukofsky

“Every writer in this book has a slightly different process, but they all start with the same thing: a blank page.”

— Timothy Ferriss

I don't like writing - it's so difficult to say what you mean. It's much easier to edit other people's writing and…

— Robert Gottlieb

I hadn't meant to do the pattern of publishing short stories and then a novel. I thought, 'I'm a novelist. I know…

— Andrew Sean Greer

A journal is more than a memory goad. It's therapeutic. The simple act of opening a notebook to put words down stills…

— Randy Wayne White

“In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look…

— Rainer Maria Rilke

It's a hard thing to examine and difficult to speak for other writers, but when I look at my own writing there…

— Katie Kitamura

Nine Years Under is a sparkling debut--- brimming with love and bursting with life. Booker's Baltimore is equal parts The Wire and…

— Tayari Jones

I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn’t realized it (the original book) had survived, so…

— Harper Lee

It's like the query letter problem that I just mentioned, magnified a hundredfold. You might be good at telling a story, but…

— Patrick Rothfuss

I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've…

— Doris Lessing

Very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external.

— Martin Amis

“It made them feel, as all good books do, less alone.”

— Jason Fagone

I am definitely a storyteller, but probably not a traditional Storyteller.

— James Welch

My past is very interesting, and I treasure it, but to write about it, it's just not on my radar.

— Steve Vai

“If you can read, you don't ever have to be lonely.”

— Maggie Osborne

Improv has been immensely beneficial to me as both an actor and a writer.

— Jim Rash

“A sage is a library whose bookshelves are in his soul.”

— Matshona Dhliwayo

I really believe one of the jobs of a writer is to stretch as far as you can into other voices.

— Grace Paley

I am a story teller and I take each story very seriously.

— Michael Welch

I've tried everywhere, but my garden shed is the most effective place to write.

— Lee Mack

The writer is a writer because he cannot help it. It is a compulsion.

— Edna Ferber

“It pained Emily to her librarian’s soul to see books mistreated like this.”

— Deborah Harkness

Contrary to popular belief, editors and agents are gagging for good books.

— Meg Rosoff

“Van Houten, I'm a good person but a shitty writer. you're a shitty person but a good writer.”

— John Green

Every record, you've got more experiences to draw on as a writer and a musician.

— Jerry Cantrell

I write fast, because I have not the brains to write slow.

— Georges Simenon