Writer Quotes · Page 397

“He wore binoculars around his neck the way librarians wear their glasses.”

— Jane Hamilton

Writing about Jerusalem was very stressful; every word counts.

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

Everything I say about [writing] battles applies equally well in the boudoir.

— Chris Humphreys

I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.

— Norman MacCaig

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.

— Donna Tartt

Which book you cannot find in a library? Cheque-books.

— Muskaan

You live through stuff, and it affects the way you feel about the world, and you write about it.

— Adam Duritz

Reading has been a part of my life ever since I was born.

— Marley Dias

Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and…

— Lloyd Alexander

Angela Carter's fiction blew me away and really instilled a passion for writing, bolstered by Vladimir Nabokov. But in general, I can't…

— Jeff VanderMeer

Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on…

— J. K. Rowling

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The…

— Albert Camus

I write almost entirely in bed or on a couch with my feet up on the coffee table. I feel most creative…

— Gary Shteyngart

“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task…

— Henry David Thoreau

Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is…

— Isaac D'Israeli

A writer's problem does not change. It is always how to write truly and having found out what is true to project…

— Ernest Hemingway

It's good to have a foothold in reality, a base somewhere that's always been a base. Sharman Macdonald once said she needs…

— Sean Biggerstaff

Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing…

— William Zinsser

“...the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem…

— Herman Melville

“Somewhere there is a book that says you ought to cry buckets of tears over yourself and love yourself with a passion…

— Joanna Russ

“«A book can't take the place of a man!» «I disagree. A book can give you most things a relationship can. It…

— Sarah Morgan

Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won't go back to page one, but I might go back to page…

— Joan Didion

Novel-writing is a highly skilled and laborious trade. One does not just sit behind a screen jotting down other people's conversation. One…

— Evelyn Waugh

In the end, all worlds, whether they're set in the future or in New Jersey of today, are fictions. Sure, you don't…

— Junot Diaz

I kind of want to be seen as an American writer, not just a New York writer.

— Jami Attenberg

Life loiters at the book's first page,-- Ah! could we turn the leaf.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.

— James Bryce

If I print something out, I just spend all my time trying to find where I've put it down.

— Jennifer Ehle

“Don't judge me by my books. They're not my voices, and they were never my stories to tell.”

— Nadège Richards

One of your jobs as a writer is to cut out the noise. All you have is your instincts and your process.

— Chris Chibnall

All the books I have written have been one book, from the beginning.

— Marguerite Young

“Library rules the world, son. Best to have a seat at the table”

— Rachel Caine

I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I'm an idiot.

— Steven Wright

I do want to go another way - to write something completely different.

— Anne Rice

Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about critics.

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

We have all this courage as writers, but then there's this fear.

— Sandra Cisneros

You know you’re writing well when you're throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.

— Ernest Hemingway

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

— Bono

I thought writing about somebody current would be a little closer to what I'm used to doing.

— Adam Clymer

“If u only read the books that everyone's reading, you can think what everyone else is thinking.”

— Haruki Murakami