Writer Quotes · Page 634

The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.

— William Hazlitt

“Writing unlocks the heart and soul that we might be receptive to God’s blessings.”

— Peggy Toney Horton

Better to write twaddle, anything, than nothing at all.

— Katherine Mansfield

Those who say they would write a book if only they had time will never become authors.

— Catherine Cookson

It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

— Katy Lederer

Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.

— William Zinsser

A people's literature is the great text-book for real knowledge of them.

— Edith Hamilton

It's fun. I sit down every day and tell stories. Some folk would kill to get that chance.

— Bernard Cornwell

SPOOKER, n. A writer whose imagination concerns itself with supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks.

— Ambrose Bierce

Shera's Two Laws of Cataloging: Law #1, No cataloger will accept the work of any other cataloger. Law #2: No cataloger will…

— Jesse Shera

[Preface to second edition:] ... I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex…

— Anne Bronte

I haven't been in a job situation in which I was competing with other women. As a writer, you're more likely to…

— Gloria Steinem

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves…

— Mary Oliver

Just about everybody has written a first novel that they throw away before writing their actual first novel.

— Daniel Handler

“and although the young writer never met his literary mentor, the spiritual connection between the two writers would never be dissolved.”

— Siri Hustvedt

I like to write about lots of things in real life that people can relate to, that people can I guess connect…

— Cody Simpson

There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having…

— Flannery O'Connor

“When a book lies unopened it might contain anything in the world, anything imaginable. It therefore, in that pregnant moment before opening,…

— Catherynne M. Valente

“I guess you can call me "old fashioned". I prefer the book with the pages that you can actually turn. Sure, I…

— Felicia Johnson

“Every room I've lived in since I was given my own room at eleven was lined with, and usually overfull of, books.…

— Jonathan Lethem

It seems to me that the dedication of a library is an act of faith. To bring together the resources of the…

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

I see a lot of writers who complain when their book doesn't sell and the reason that happens sometimes, is they don't…

— Kevin Sampsell

At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to…

— Doris Lessing

I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew…

— Chinua Achebe

“Owning a book is a third of the goal. The others are actually reading it and applying it.”

— Israel Wayne

I was nine when I first knew I wanted to be a writer, in particular, a poet.

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“To be a devout reader was to be an acolyte of solace.”

— Tanya Egan Gibson

“Experiencing life makes you a better writer, and writing enhances your experience of life.”

— Kristen Melissa Davis

The screenwriters I know share a few personality traits and one of them is anxiety.

— Tony Gilroy

Prose writers are interested mostly in life and commas.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Of course, with Papaveria Press, you know the book itself is going to be beautiful.

— Theodora Goss

“You cannot prove your worth by bylines and busyness.”

— Katelyn S. Irons

The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.

— Beverly Cleary

I thought about starting a novella club because it seemed less ambitious.

— Lena Dunham

To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing - a hand worker in an era of mass…

— Susan Sontag

Self-publishing has been a dubious challenge to traditional publishers, at best.

— Michelle Dean

Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

— Octavio Paz

I hope to be a writer and musician my whole life, fingers crossed.

— Mitski

“Five of the most exciting words in the English language: "What shall I read next?”

— Jason Erik Lundberg

Truth is better than fiction in terms of telling the story.

— Kristi Jacobson