Writer Quotes · Page 627

Dear Aspiring Author; Write with heart. Put that open, honest, bare soul on paper.

— Victoria Laurie

For heaven's sake, don't write writing. Write reading!

— Avi

I keep a writer's notebook and also put all my daily schedules and to-do lists in it.

— Celeste Ng

It's tough to know what I'm going to write about. I never really know until it starts happening.

— Lauv

I didn't write the book to sell the book, but to tell my experiences.

— Larry Hagman

It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading.

— Katherine Paterson

I'm not very good at writing fantasy or even reading it.

— Ruskin Bond

“Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

— Carl Sagan

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them.…

— Orson Scott Card

“Good characters make you feel like you have new friends, don’t they? You have to re-read the books just to visit with…

— Shawn L. Bird

I eventually want to do writing on all the films, but not necessarily to be the writer. Writing is a painful, painful…

— Cary Fukunaga

“To be a writer and know the pain of artistic block is to know real frustration (though it's not quite as bad…

— John D. Rhodes

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this…

— James Thurber

“The job of adults who care about reading is to move heaven and earth to put that book into a child’s hands.…

— Kenny Pieper

I don't think I consciously decided to write for the young adult audience; my subconscious decided for me.

— Mark Frost

“Don't let society's defined genre hold you down, be a free spirit and just write, let society be the one to decide…

— Uma Nnenna

I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from…

— Ray Bradbury

I think you often have that sense when you write--that if you can spot something in yourself and set it down on…

— Nora Ephron

Totally captivating. Starhawk has created a magic land to which we can return at will for the kind of exotic romance and…

— Elinor Gadon

“The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was…

— Alan Bennett

People are used to streaming and binge-watching. When they see an author they like, if there's only one book, even if they…

— Marcia Clark

“For God sake write and don't worry about what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what.…

— Ernest Hemingway

I remember reading the book in high school and always thinking of Gatsby as this strong, stoic, suave, mysterious man who had…

— Leonardo DiCaprio

The experienced writer says to the anguished novice: 'Just do it; get something, anything, on to the screen or page, just establish…

— Hilary Mantel

[On writing:] The most egotistic of occupations, and the most gratifying while it lasts.

— Vita Sackville-West

The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.

— John Steinbeck

I'm a writer, but this is a business. You have to look at it in the way you would look at any…

— Janet Evanovich

What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.

— Henry Miller

The Apple Pie Hubbub was a significant novel for me, because that's when I first started using verbs.

— Steve Martin

Although every writer dreams of getting it right on the first pass, very few succeed.

— Richard Rhodes

One of the best ways to expand his horizon is through a regular reading program.

— John F. Kennedy

I said, ‘There’s one idea I’ve been carrying in my hip pocket for 35 years. It’s Woodrow Wilson.’

— A. Scott Berg

I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.

— Jane Austen

“The pen to a writer is like a cigarette to a smoker; they need it to take the edge off.”

— Kellie Elmore

Your deep interests should always have a dog-eared place on your nightstand.

— Douglas Wilson

What do you really want? Sit down and write it out on a piece of paper. Write it in the present tense.

— Bob Proctor

Cormac McCarthy's language is perfect. He is in my view the greatest living American prose stylist.

— Tommy Lee Jones

Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought.

— Stephen Covey

“You can only write well, what you have experienced.”

— Lailah Gifty Akita