Writer Quotes · Page 584

“Nothing is easier to write than scenery; nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is.

— Edwidge Danticat

Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion.

— Walter Jon Williams

Some people say 'I want to be a writer,' and some people say, 'I want to write.'

— Robin Hobb

Don't be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.

— Sinclair Lewis

The writer creates the role on the page and then the actor takes it and makes it their own.

— Joanna Kerns

When you learn to read you will be born again...and you will never be quite so alone again.

— Rumer Godden

“But above all, an author must write passionately and edit passionately.”

— Paul Collins

“She stamped the book and gave it to me. "You bring it back in three weeks." I held it over my heart.…

— Joan Bauer

Not writing is as important as writing - go out into the world and remember how interesting it, and the people in…

— Veronica Roth

“I'm not trying as a writer to be smart or to understand the inner workings of my narrator, I'm trying to survive…

— Ron Carlson

“I write for a purpose. I was born to use papers and books to speak up. I was born to use my…

— Mitta Xinindlu

To buy books would be a good thing if we could also buy the time to read them; but the purchase of…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

I started writing nonfiction because nonfiction is well-suited to subjects that, if you wrote them as fiction, people would say, "I don't…

— Debra Monroe

To say 'A High Wind in Jamaica' is a novel about children who are abducted by pirates is to make it seem…

— Andrew Sean Greer

Tolstoy was the most gifted writer who ever lived. It's like he stuck a pen in his heart and it didn't even…

— Mel Brooks

I think having a coach or an editor or whatever the novelist's producer is could help. If you finish a chapter and…

— Craig Finn

Funny as hell, searingly honest, and urgently real, Sam Pink's Rontel puts to shame most modern fiction. His writing perfectly captures the…

— Joe Meno

“I think you can write about what you know for about an hour and a half. Then you have to start bullshitting.…

— A.M. Homes

“On November 18 of alternate years Mr Earbrass begins writing 'his new novel'. Weeks ago he chose its title at random from…

— Edward Gorey

For me, novel-writing, by its nature, contains months of feeling lost, gloomy, fatally misguided. The challenge has always been in assuring myself…

— Ben Dolnick

“The modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or…

— Roland Barthes

There are lots of similarities between being a writer and a lawyer: to tell a story to a jury, hold their attention,…

— John Mortimer

There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is…

— Agatha Christie

A library is but the soul's burying ground. It is a land of shadows.

— Henry Ward Beecher

I'm the only person who has ever found the right way to build an autobiography.

— Mark Twain

There's nothing quite as exciting or moving as the very finest literary non-fiction.

— Catherine Jinks

Libraries are places where the damaged go to find friends

— Tamora Pierce

To write anything decent, it's hard. Anything you want to be good is hard.

— Sean Lock

To me one of the most important things is launching a children's book division.

— Maria Rodale

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.

— Abraham Lincoln

A library is a place that is a repository of information and gives every citizen equal access to it.

— Neil Gaiman

I suppose sequels are inevitable for a writer of a certain age.

— John Updike

Fantasy novels, I don't really gravitate to that part of the bookstore.

— Peter Dinklage

My creator owned books sell better than my mainstream books. And that makes no sense.

— Kelly Sue DeConnick

Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living.

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

I write for the same reason I read: to find out what's going to happen.

— Lisa Unger

I have just about every book written on the Klan and I've read them all.

— Daryl Davis

A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.

— Daniel J. Boorstin

Teaching and writing about philosophy is about the only thing I've ever been really good at.

— Allen W. Wood