Writer Quotes · Page 438

“The author should strive to be silent in his novel.”

— Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick

There's a powerful magic about being a writer that I still marvel at.

— Sidney Lumet

“I can read books. I can flow like a river. I can absorb everything that comes my way, good or bad.”

— Abhaidev

A book you finish reading is not the same book it was before you read it.

— David Mitchell

“I'm the type of girl who will buy a third copy of the same book just because it is an older edition.”

— T.J. Mihaila

I have a reputation for writing all kinds of hard-core, violent things.

— Brian Azzarello

[On reading:] It is almost the only inexhaustible pleasure.

— Annie French Hector

“Flash fiction is like a kiddie's pool for writers.”

— Neil Leckman

“I know no greater bore than the man who insists on lending you a book which you do not intend to read.”

— Harold Rabinowitz

Every writer needs new material now and then, whether it's traveling to Japan, volunteering at a food bank, learning a new language,…

— Celeste Ng

“I will write: for myself, for those who come after, and for the voices that cry out not to be forgotten.”

— Stephen R. Lawhead

“Today I write, riots with insite! Tomorrow I read, take the lead! Sometimes I sleep, health to keep! But for now I…

— Leslie Austin

I'm not a speed writer. I write slowly and revise obsessively. The end result tends to be good. That's where my strength…

— Patrick Rothfuss

No matter how long my day job hours were, I always made time to write. I wrote fiction, short stories, and poetry.…

— Lisa Joy

Yesterday I did not want to be borrowed but this is the typewriter that sits before me and love is where yesterday…

— Anne Sexton

“What broke your heart so bad That you had to close every door, That you say you have a dark soul And…

— Sanhita Baruah

There are very few works of fiction that take you inside the heads of all characters. I tell my writing students that…

— Julia Glass

A great novelist excels on the small scale and the large, the individual leaf and root as well as the forest; good…

— Laura Miller

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every day, I learn something new. I think one of the most exciting things for a writer is to work on a…

— Elizabeth Meriwether

Are You Seeing Me? is written powerfully with both the heart and the head, and neither gives an inch. It's funny, moving…

— Nick Earls

I am sometimes asked to name my favourite books. The list changes, depending on my mood, the year, tricks played by memory.…

— Mohsin Hamid

I was under twenty when I deliberately put it to myself one night after good conversation that there are moments when we…

— Robert Frost

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that,…

— Maya Angelou

If people can write to each other across space, why can they not write across time too?

— Ahdaf Soueif

I've never written nearly as much about place as people seem to think I do. I just write about class.

— Richard Russo

“Can I show all that I have written to my Beloved, the one for whom all I write is written?”

— Vipul Rikhi

When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.

— Jean Rhys

No matter how well a person writes, a successful book is a team effort involving many, many people.

— Linda Lael Miller

The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.

— Anonymous

“I had once read a book that said a traveler should always have one and it made a lot of sense.”

— Ilona Andrews

We read books, talked books, argued over books and became dearer and dearer to one another.

— Anonymous

When I only begin to read, I forget I'm on this world. It lifts me on wings with high thoughts.

— Anzia Yezierska

I can direct things but I can't write. My memory is going, so I struggle for words.

— Terry Jones

Susan Rebecca White has a keen sense for how her characters talk and think. An impressive debut.

— Tom Barbash

One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is ever happy anywhere.

— Raymond Chandler

Short stories demand a certain awareness of one's own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus.

— Joan Didion

“It's funny. Writing is a solitary task, but in order to succeed at it, you need other people.”

— Kim Wright

“Judas, boredom is such a drag, drag, drag. Writing might be good therapy for me, though.”

— Beatrice Sparks

The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity.

— E. L. Doctorow