Writer Quotes · Page 511

“The author must write what he has to say, not speak it.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Writing is a futile attempt to preserve what disappears moment by moment.

— Marge Piercy

When I step into this library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it.

— Anonymous

I never read books - and still don't read books - to develop them.

— Frances McDormand

I love reading books, I love the way they feel and getting through it. It's like an event!

— Kate Nash

I'm a good essay writer, I know how to write. I was just good at it.

— Benny the Butcher

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

— Marilyn Hacker

Writing really evokes empathy in a way very few things can do.

— Erin Gruwell

I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between…

— Jonathan Coe

There's just something "off" about equating the act of spending three years writing a book with the act of someone exploiting themselves…

— Marie Calloway

People say, 'You're like Dickens', but I'm not like Dickens. Zadie Smith is a Dickensian writer because she's writing about society now,…

— Sarah Waters

I write for myself. I don't write because I have a record coming out. I write because I want to. I need…

— Hunter Hayes

If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account.

— V. S. Naipaul

Writing is not "the establishment of a professional reputation" as if one were a doctor or lawyer; it is not properly in…

— Elizabeth Hardwick

I was writing an earnest novel about cruises in the Caribbean and I just started writing 'Bridget Jones' to get some money,…

— Helen Fielding

“I keep going;I keep writing because I know something good will happen, and I want to see it when it happens.”

— Millicent Ashby

As I've indicated, most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture…

— Lawrence Lessig

My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit…

— Anne Fadiman

“How, then, to proceed? My method is: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, with “P” on this side (“Positive”) and…

— George Saunders

“Flora had also learned the degraded art of 'tasting' unread books, and now, whenever her skimming eye lit on a phrase about…

— Stella Gibbons

You write a book and it's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. You don't know…

— Isabel Allende

“but you are very well aware that I belong to that remarkable class of authors who, when they are bearing anything about…

— Leslie S. Klinger

Corliss had never once considered the fate of library books. She'd never wondered how many books go unread. She loved books. How…

— Sherman Alexie

“It may sound dorky, but I love books--the feel of the paper, the old, musty smell, and especially the way the words…

— Cheryl Renee Herbsman

“Finish the book. Finish the book, regardless of how bad it is. You can make it better in a rewrite.”

— Joe Hill

I became a copy boy. Not for long. I started writing stories.

— Jimmy Breslin

The business of writing is one of the four or five most private things in the world.

— Ethel Wilson

“As far as I can tell, a young adult novel is a regular novel that people actually read.”

— Stephen Colbert

Once I got my life sorted and started to get healthy, then I was able to focus on writing.

— Mary Gauthier

If people would write exactly what I wanted to read I wouldn't feel so compelled to write myself

— Laurell K. Hamilton

I nearly always write — just as I nearly always breathe.

— John Steinbeck

Write for the love of writing and you can't go wrong.

— Christopher Paul Curtis

Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans.

— Claire Tomalin

“I guess Faulkner never would have written anything like this, huh? Oh, well.”

— Stephen King

In writing fiction, I can be free. I can use my life. The raw material is my experiences.

— Miriam Toews

An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.

— Tony Hillerman

“Literature today is like elevator music for a narcoleptic.”

— Quentin R. Bufogle

I do like the idea of being an auteur in the sense of writing and being in your own stuff.

— T. J. Miller

Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.

— Jennifer Haigh

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking.

— Arnold Bennett