Writer Quotes · Page 515

one learns best, and writes best, in a state of defiance.

— Fay Weldon

This paper of yours is so lightly written that you must have sweated terribly.

— Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

The novel is never really in the first draft. The novel really happens in the revisions.

— Tama Janowitz

“Creating a world within the imagination one day at a time through words and colors.”

— Peggy A. Borel

I've discovered writers by reading books left in airplane seats and weird hotels.

— Lee Child

I've always written about stuff I have gone through.

— Adam Gontier

Of all needs a book has, the chief need is to be readable.

— Anthony Trollope

I've loved writing since I was little. I used to write stories.

— Chrissy Costanza

I seem to find different material every four to six months and I frequently forget it which is a shame because it…

— Leo Kottke

We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to…

— Georges Simenon

I've been working on my autobiography, just pecking away in longhand. The more you write, the more you remember. The more you…

— Pat Morita

All newspaper writers have heard that the stuff they compose today has an excellent chance of being used to wrap tomorrow's mackerel.

— Ira Berkow

In 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' Hemingway cozies up to revolution by romanticizing it (and not only with those execrable love scenes).

— Madison Smartt Bell

I'm not fundamentally a writer. I know writers, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for them. It bothers me that…

— Marc Maron

Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we…

— Jane Yolen

Start early and work hard. A writer's apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he's almost ready…

— David Eddings

A library is but the soul's burial ground; it is the land of shadows. Yet one is impressed with the thought, the…

— Henry Ward Beecher

“People sometimes act as though owning books you haven't read constitutes a charade or pretense, but for me, there's a lovely mystery…

— Leah Price

“I write from the heart and do not edit and edit ... my works (music or writing). Although most writers do, and…

— Alexzander Beck

I'm a writer who stacks cat food for a living. It's true: I have a master's degree in creative writing, I've published…

— Ali Liebegott

“Writers pay a lot of attention to wordage, because some publishers seem to care more about length than about quality and will…

— Piers Anthony

Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It…

— Annie Dillard

Lists, and lists of lists, invite many questions and one that crops up here is: what makes a children's book last? When…

— Michael Rosen

I don't think you should write something as long as a novel around anything that is not of the gravest concern to…

— Flannery O'Connor

“Killed by a librarian with a red card," said Jerry. "that's got to be embarrassing.”

— John Joseph Adams

Books make great gifts because you don't have to plug them in.

— Alec Baldwin

There comes a time when you have to chose between turning the page and closing the book…

— Melchor Lim

Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.

— Paulo Coelho

“If you don't love to read, you just haven't found the right book.”

— Tim Green

I love the fact that you collaborate with your readers when you write a book.

— Robert Crais

I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Working with people made me like my books so much more.”

— Lynn Cahoon

“Libraries are place where one can find satisfaction through books by discovering more ideas”

— Abid Hussain Library Officer

Writing is a way of drifting within my own mind: almost a solitary process, so to speak.

— Twinkle Khanna

Betsy returned to her chair, took off her coat and hat, opened her book and forgot the world again.

— Maud Hart Lovelace

“Books are not luxuries. They are the meat and drink for the mind.”

— Andrew Taylor

The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.

— Northrop Frye

My own accumulation of influences is actually what made me a writer in the first place.

— Andrew Sean Greer

“Books are a place away from routine, a place associated with dreams and fantasies.”

— The Gutenberg Elegies