Writer Quotes · Page 549

The demand for absolute purity of genres is becoming nowadays an anachronism in literature.

— Stanislaw Lem

After my husband spell-checks one of my manuscripts, my editor says, 'It's been Normanized.'

— Ruth Glick

Maybe I'm a serial regional writer. First here, then there, across the map.

— Richard Ford

“...I want to read what you're thinking. I'm pretty sure it's not about housekeeping.”

— Kathryn Stockett

Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.

— Bernard Berenson

Being an author is always like being a well-run dictatorship - it's all one person speaking.

— Junot Diaz

I do a lot of mental work before I ever start writing.

— Anna Quindlen

The world of books: romantic, idle, shiftless world so beautiful, so cheap compared with living.

— Nancy Spain

It's not like publishing is perfect. Far from it. The industry is struggling to adapt and survive, and it's incredibly frustrating trying…

— Jim C. Hines

I think we're so often, as writers, afraid of writing something that is less than perfect, and that fear paralyzes us. I'm…

— Raphael Bob-Waksberg

Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with…

— E. Lockhart

I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning…

— Robert Harris

I'm a comic writer, in some ways, and a comic person when I'm up at a podium, in order to disguise the…

— Gregory Maguire

There is much to admire in Peter Brett's writing, and his concept is brilliant. There's action and suspense all the way.

— Terry Brooks

“Lucky Luke: I wonder how you manage to read with everything that's going on. Jolly Jumper: By turning the pages just like…

— Morris

Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the…

— Lord Chesterfield

I was working on the book, but in a very subterranean kind of a fashion. And I think that giving yourself permission…

— Emily Barton

Amaryllis in Blueberry is a rich, evocative story about an unusual family that will sweep readers away to another place and time.…

— Susan Wiggs

Delicious... Everything I'd hoped for in a new Wild Cards book. The character interactions and plot twists have exactly the complexity, surprise,…

— Austin Grossman

The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize…

— Chuck Palahniuk

Don't market yourself. Editors and readers don't know what they want until they see it. Scratch what itches. Write what you need…

— Anonymous

“She read all sorts of things: travels, and sermons, and old magazines. Nothing was so dull that she couldn't get through with…

— Susan Coolidge

Writers do not want to think they are less rational than other people, and at the mercy of compulsions, but in their…

— Hilary Mantel

No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is…

— Ernest Hemingway

My Panasonic typewriter can make graphs. It types in four different colors.

— Heather O'Rourke

“The best way for children to learn grammar is by making them habitual readers.”

— Love The Stacks Bookstore

“You will learn more about writing from one hour of reading than you will in six hours of writing.”

— John McAleer

If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter.

— Louis L'Amour

“...but they were writers and writers suggest things just to see what happens next.”

— Abigail Thomas

What interests me is what you might call vernacular writing, writing that connects you to a place.

— Calvin Trillin

That is why I write - to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.

— Paulo Coelho

I'm an appreciator. I love all kinds of books, and I want others to love them, too.

— Michael Dirda

Don't be quick to jump to conclusion without write Subject.

— Alexander John Jr

I just wanted to be part of telling a good story that shocks people.

— Tom Payne

Writing is basically a job for people who like punching themselves in the face, I’m pretty sure.

— Warren Ellis

“I read books—read, read, one can learn everything from books.”

— Rabih Alameddine

The truth is, writing is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not.

— Amy Poehler

I'm always fascinated by why a person becomes a writer.

— Adriana Trigiani

I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.

— Donald Barthelme

Teaching writing puts you on the point of a pin in terms of what you want your own writing to be.

— Jane Alison