Writer Quotes · Page 496

I'm trying to write books that taste like ice cream but have the nutrition of vegetables.

— Dan Brown

“Fiction allows you to go deeper into the truth. You can put anything down and you can take chances.”

— Peter Matthieson

When I wrote 'Dear Fatty,' I realised that sitting and writing alone is an absolute joy.

— Dawn French

“No one can teach you how to write. A writer writes, plain and simple. You improve by doing.”

— Scott Ciencin

“There are so many good books waiting to be read, I’ll never go back and read one twice.”

— Deb Baker

What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.

— John Steinbeck

A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no writing.

— Don Roff

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

— Haruki Murakami

No one connected intimately with a writer has any appreciation of his temperament, except to think him overdoing everything.

— Zane Grey

“The authors whose books get published - once accepted as a reclusive breed - are now vetted by publicists to make sure…

— Susan Cain

If as a child I had written a story, the best story that I could imagine, I would have written as indeed…

— Paolo Maldini

I think the moment you're writing about somebody who's not exactly you, then the challenge is all equal.

— Nick Hornby

A writer is one who communicates ideas and emotions people want to communicate but aren't quite sure how, or even if, they…

— Criss Jami

“Are there any books of that sort nowadays? The only ones I ever see mentioned in the papers are about married couples…

— P.G. Wodehouse

I am finding it very hard to get my novel started. I suffer from stylistic abscesses; and sentences keep itching without coming…

— Gustave Flaubert

When you're a writer, sometimes you have to spend time poking at a part of yourself that normal, sane people leave alone.

— Vikram Chandra

“There’s something deep in the heart of every person that wants to protect culture. The only thing about my pending career that…

— Scott Douglas

M. J. Putney's writing has always been magical; now that she has turned her hand to the telling of a fantasy tale,…

— Elizabeth Haydon

“I thought of To Kill a Mockingbird. I had finished reading it one night in a bunker, my knees bent and hunched…

— Michael Anthony

“Do you know why God invented writers? Because he loves a good story. And he doesn't give a damn about the words.…

— J.R. Moehringer

I'll go to the south of Sicily in the winter, and paint memories of Arles – I'll buy a piano and Mozart…

— Jack Kerouac

Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody…

— Stephen King

“What a vapid job title our culture gives to those honorable laborers the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians variously called Learned Men of…

— Miles Harvey

“If a book is worth reading at all, it is worth reading more than once. Suspense is the lowest of excitants, designed…

— William Gerhardie

It's okay to be a bad writer if you have something to say.

— Bill Stott

The modernness of all good books seems to give men an existence as wide as man.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“One idea to a sentence is still the best advice that anyone has ever given on writing.”

— Bill Bryson

Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.

— Walker Percy

The books housed in one's first adult bookshelf are the geological bed of who we wish to become

— Sheridan Hay

“Is it possible to write a reverent novel," said Nassrin, "and to have it be good?...”

— Azar Nafisi

I was anticipating that some readers might misread [the book] ROOM itself as a hymn to homeschooling.

— Emma Donoghue

The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.

— Francoise Sagan

There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all.

— Stephen King

You have to write a lot. And you have to rewrite what you wrote a lot more.

— Holly Black

Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.

— Humphrey Carpenter

Reporting the extreme things as if they were the average things will start you on the art of fiction.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight.

— Junot Diaz

“People live in my head. If they do anything interesting, don't worry, I write it down for ya.”

— Lauren DeStefano

A novel should be as like life as a painting, but not as like life as a piece of waxwork.

— Mary Russell Mitford

I have more to say as a writer than from behind a wok.

— Eddie Huang