Writer Quotes · Page 588

Of all forms of fiction, autobiography is the most gratuitous.

— Tom Stoppard

Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings.

— Claire Tomalin

I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.

— Flannery O'Connor

If I stop writing I am dead. And that's the only way I'll stop: dead.

— Charles Bukowski

“It's a journal, Reynard. Every great thinker keeps a journal, you know.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

I would never write, ever. I might as well exile myself.

— Dree Hemingway

Online publication is fine with me, in part because I hope to collect those stories later.

— Gene Wolfe

I can certainly sympathize with writers who don't want to put themselves or their loved ones at risk.

— Adam Hochschild

“Any writer who waits for inspiration to strike will never finish a book. Inspiration is all very well but it will never…

— Barbara Michaels

“The sharing of a book is a statement—a message of affection that is also an act of self-revelation. Join my club, it…

— Alexander McCall Smith

For this purpose I determined to keep an account of the voyage, and to write down punctually every thing we performed or…

— Christopher Columbus

His eyes gravitated towards the wall-to-wall bookshelf at one end of the room. 'You folks like books, I see.

— Regina Doman

“No shame in having a ghostwriter," Storm said. "Some of the best books published every year are penned by talented writers whose…

— Richard Castle

I don't want to come over as some boringly self-deprecating person. But I don't see myself as a groundbreaking writer in the…

— Tom Stoppard

I've always been interested in setting my stories against a big event, the importance of which my younger readers are slowly becoming…

— Morris Gleitzman

I have a cheat-sheet for each one of my characters about their personality, the way they look, etc. So there is no…

— R. L. Stine

My advice for finding a literary agent would be first, put your work out there as much as possible and hopefully someone…

— Sarah Cooper

“To the people who insist they really do have a great idea but they just can't write, I'd say that given some…

— Iain Banks

Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious,…

— Walter Kirn

All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know…

— Diane Setterfield

“What are you reading?" She replied without once taking her eyes off the page. "I am reading the sort of sentimental novel…

— Maya Rodale

I don't want to name names because they'd be mad at me if I did, but people who are significant novelists can't…

— Tony Kushner

I think reading is a gift. It was a gift that was given to me as a child by many people, and…

— Joseph Joubert

I'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself - so I don't end…

— Jamaica Kincaid

We have some writers so abstruse and deep that they drown themselves in their fathomless sentences.

— Josh Billings

'All we need is a book,' roared Leslie; 'don't panic, hit 'em with a book.

— Gerald Durrell

I try to approach reading in front of millions of people as I would reading in somebody's living room.

— Amanda Gorman

When I'm writing, I am just doing what feels right for me.

— Jed Mercurio

Faulkner was almost oriental. I never got into Faulkner.

— Tom T. Hall

I didn't aspire to write and never considered it as a career option.

— Vantile Whitfield

Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins.

— Michael Winter

No book I publish will be perfect, but I need to feel I've taken it as far as I can.

— Curtis Sittenfeld

I love books, and all the best ones are people analysing their own emotions. You can learn from that.

— John Lydon

“Fiction is the lie that illuminates a greater truth.”

— Kevin Fox

“Facts never have to be plausible; fiction does.” “So”

— Jonathan Strahan

Very few writers of distinction in fact were outstanding as undergraduates.

— Joyce Carol Oates

The very best of all Merwin: I have been reading William since 1952, and always with joy.

— Harold Bloom

I was always obsessed with being a writer of some sort.

— David Droga

Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.

— Philip Roth

“This set includes my exclusive novel REBEL, a story of piracy, ancient secrets,”

— Edward W. Robertson