Writer Quotes · Page 527

I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.

— David Ogilvy

“There’s no talking in the library,” I reply. “Too bad. I’d still come talk to you.”

— Sansa Rayne

Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.

— George Henry Lewes

The publishing world is very timid. Readers are much braver.

— Kiran Desai

What would be the good of rushing? You want these books to last.

— Robert Caro

Since I tend to write chronologically, the middle is always the place where the process is most taxing.

— Robert Paul Weston

The more learned a writer, the more digression beckons him.

— Mason Cooley

Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing.

— Bonnie Friedman

“If a writer doesn't believe his fictional characters are actually real, how can he expect the readers to?”

— Jim Power

There is an old saying: In history nothing is true but the names and dates. In fiction everything is true but the…

— Tom Clancy

“Everything bleeds into everything and fiction is just this funny desperate little attempt to staunch the bleeding.”

— Meghan Lamb

To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of…

— Aldous Huxley

In looking around me seeking for miserable resources against the heaviness of time, I open a book and I say to myself,…

— Suzanne Curchod

Above all, have a good time. If you aren’t enjoying writing it, you can hardly expect someone else to enjoy reading it.

— Tom Robbins

“A good editor is like tinsel to a Christmas Tree...they add the perfect amount of sparkle without being gaudy.”

— Bobbi Romans

Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that…

— Vladimir Nabokov

I think that it's important for people to read philosophy and literature is not because I think everyone should be a well-rounded…

— Siri Hustvedt

Writing a novel was like I had some Play-Doh to work with and could just keep working with it - doing a…

— Miranda July

A truly extraordinary work: vivid, passionate and utterly compelling. The Sound of One Hand Clapping is raw as a wound. It opens…

— Niall Williams

But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of…

— Vikram Seth

Writer's block to me is where you stop because you're afraid to go forward because you're not sure of what really should…

— Homer Hickam

in reading ... stories, you can be many different people in many different places, doing things you would never have a chance…

— Natalie Babbitt

Imagination, it turns out, is a great deal like reporting in your own head. Here is a paradox of fiction-writing. You are…

— Amy Waldman

“During those days, both the bed and my little rickety table were swimming in notes and scribbled-over manuscripts that I took turns…

— Knut Hamsun

“Where they burn books they will in the end burn people too.”

— Salman Rushdie

“A good book is always good, no matter how many times you've already read it.”

— Osamu Dazai

“When you got a library and a fridge, you got everything you'll ever need.”

— Jolien Goedleven

“You’d rather be known as the librarian who carries her cat in her gym bag?” she retorted.”

— Sofie Kelly

“Inspiration doesn't always come in chronological order.”

— Gina Marinello-Sweeney

Your job is to give people a reason to keep reading.

— Dave Barry

You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read...

— Keri Hulme

I prioritise story over science, but not at the expense of being really stupid about it.

— Alastair Reynolds

Every day one has to earn the name of 'writer' over again, with much wrestling.

— Sylvia Plath

'The Beach' novel, in my mind, was, in some respects, subversive.

— Alex Garland

Reading was very important; the proper exercise and development of one's mind was a paramount duty.

— Elizabeth von Arnim

A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.

— Ernest Hemingway

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we must stay where we are.”

— Mason Cooley

With a public library card in your hand, you have access to the Internet and a world of opportunities.

— Bill Gates

For me, there is nothing worse than the knowledge that my life holds nothing for me but being a writer.

— Jean Stafford

I still use quill and parchment. I do e-mails, and I write, but I don't go around surfing too much.

— Oscar Nunez