Writer Quotes · Page 517

I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am.

— Jane Austen

My books are, in a way, a record of my life - that part of it that came to flower and fruit…

— John Burroughs

“That’s what I try to do—write sentences that won’t be like sand castles.”

— William Maxwell

“Ir you're a writer, reading is part of your job description. ~ Mark Rubinstein”

— Mark Rubinstein

“Read as widely and as deeply as you can. You have to be a reader before you can be a writer.”

— Y.S. Lee

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

— Robert Hass

I think some writers should wait for something to say.

— Peter Orner

If I were to write the story of my life, I would shock the world.

— Caterina Sforza

We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is…

— Lawrence Clark Powell

“You don't have to get into writing – it's not like a pair of jeans... The only way to write is to…

— Jeanette Winterson

The best fiction is geared towards conflict. We learn most about our characters through tension, when they are put up against insurmountable…

— Sufjan Stevens

The process of writing has always started for me when I put myself in a place where no one distracts me.

— Joyce Maynard

If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of…

— Ernest Hemingway

Creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and often more accessible.

— Lee Gutkind

Am I worried people will say I'm repeating myself? Sure. One thought I had was to publish it as a novel but…

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

Beware that the one who reads is the same as the book, the same as what is read, the same as the…

— Mohammed Dib

All fiction relies on the real world in the sense that we all take in the world through our five senses and…

— Rohinton Mistry

You go out into the world, you read everything you can read, you imitate the things you love, and you learn how…

— Russell Banks

I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in…

— Jess Walter

Children's book writers tend to feel quite superior, and adult writers tend to feel they wouldn't know how to write a children's…

— John Boyne

Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with…

— Jonathan Stroud

The characters in a novel are made up, figments of the writer's imagination. I'm sure this won't come as a surprise to…

— Emma Healey

“I've never heard a writer feel that way about a device with a screen. Oh sure, they're functional, practical. We would be…

— Dani Shapiro

You read, move your lips, figure out the words, and it's like you're in two places at the same time: you're sitting…

— Tatyana Tolstaya

What we search for in fiction is not so much reality, but the epiphany of truth.

— Azar Nafisi

The wonderful thing about being an American writer is you've got this vastness to draw from.

— David Means

“Don't read a book to let the time pass...let the time pass to read a book.”

— Nicholaa Spencer

Writing's a great skill, but thinking's a better one.

— Meg Rosoff

I write to make sense of things that don't make sense to me.

— Daphne Gottlieb

“I never really chose to be a writer. It's just always been what I do. Writing chose me...”

— Té Russ

“Writer: It's not an occupation; it's a compulsion.”

— Teresa Nielsen Hayden

“Living life distracts from writing. Writing distracts from living life. Therein lies the conundrum.”

— Ksenia Anske

“Writing - the act of one person giving a piece of their soul to another.”

— Anonymous

My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.

— Tahar Ben Jelloun

Good writing is like a bomb: it explodes in the face of the reader.

— Nuruddin Farah

I've been a faithful reader of the great classical documents of economics, or tried to be.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

“I read everyday, because reading takes me away, away to a place where nothing is impossible.”

— Manoj Arora

When a book is going well, it tells you where to go.

— Neel Mukherjee

There always seems to be an element of faith in my writing.

— Michaela Coel

“She'd been an actress, an artist's model, once or twice a kept woman, through all a voracious reader.”

— Glen Duncan