Writer Quotes · Page 525

“The greatest tribute one can give to a writer is that it is simply enough to read him.”

— Isaac Goldberg

All writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey towards the lost land.

— Janet Frame

You can't always be by the book every single day of your life.

— Dacre Montgomery

“...perhaps in actions I'm less of a man - but, oh the words - such lovely words...”

— John Geddes

“almost all copywriters these days write in a conversational manner.”

— Jason Goldberg

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.

— Anonymous

I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger.

— Oriana Fallaci

Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.

— Florence King

The book [The Dissemblers] officially came out two weeks after my thirtieth birthday...am I still young?

— Liza Campbell

People say, write what you know, but it's really, write about what obsesses you. Write about what you're thinking about all the…

— Meg Wolitzer

Turin is a city which entices a writer towards vigor, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way…

— Italo Calvino

It's one of the most liberating things I experience in writing - letting yourself get rid of a gesture or character or…

— Leslie Jamison

I definitely write about my life and the issues I might have or the dilemmas I'm going through, but usually I write…

— Oh Land

Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.

— Richard Russo

The fact, and the intuition or logic about the fact, are severe coordinates in fiction. In the short story they must cross…

— Louise Bogan

You can't write about a personal struggle if you're going to water it down to meet everyone's expectations about what's appropriate.

— Heidi Roizen

An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both…

— Irwin Shaw

“To write a book about Mickey Mantle and not to show people who he really was doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. So…

— Peter Golenbock

“Sally was on the first floor reading a book, one that she normally wouldn't read, and she felt quite guilty. Twilight. She…

— Anjela Myrick

“Writing is the equivalent to a striptease. You better be comfortable with your body if you're gonna remove your clothes in public…

— Kit Yan

“My goal is to allow readers their own experience of whatever discovery I have made, so that it feels new to them,…

— Kathleen Norris

“Why is so impossible to describe a book in a few words?” “That is one of the mysteries of writing. Legend has…

— Chelsea M. Cameron

“Fiction, at the point of development at which it has arrived, demands from the writer a spirit of scrupulous abnegation.The only legitimate…

— Joseph Conrad

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to…

— George Orwell

“It’s a book which, no matter how many readers it will ever have, will never have enough.”

— Anonymous

I want to tell a story that makes the reader always want to see what will happen next.

— Ken Follett

A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.

— Marianne Moore

I want my stories to move people ... to feel some kind of reward from the writing.

— Alice Munro

“A writer will always be a writer. It's not a choice, it's a destiny.”

— Stephanie Lennox

“Books passed through her fingers at the speed of night.”

— Kristen Costello

A writer's definitive death is when no one reads his books anymore. That's the final death.

— Jose Saramago

I sort of always like to write starting with when I learned how.

— Daniel Pinkwater

“I am aware these little books don't last long even if they are a success.”

— Beatrix Potter

Literature, like a gypsy, to be picturesque, should be a little ragged.

— Douglas William Jerrold

I always just wanted to be a writer, not necessarily a particular kind of writer.

— Jill Lepore

We read for instruction, for correction, and for consolation.

— Christina, Queen of Sweden

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

— Jeanette Winterson

I didn't want to write another book about fraudulence.

— Ben Lerner

Reading a book by someone you respect allows some of their brilliance to rub off on you.

— Anonymous

If only I could talk as good as I can write, then maybe I wouldn't be all alone tonight.

— Robert Boughter