Writer Quotes · Page 739

Writers who open up horizons for other people are performing a function every bit as important as a consciously politicized writer.

— Wole Soyinka

“Sometimes it's impossible to say certain things ... Writing is something needed by man to share experience.”

— Arnost Lustig

I learned to distrust writers who talked about how they squeezed the blood onto the typewriter. They just don't want you to…

— Jules Feiffer

I sense people expect something to show for ten years. But I do feel like it is dense. Some of my own…

— Danielle Dutton

Sometimes I'll be writing something, and I say to myself, 'Okay, that's definitely DTB,' or, 'It's definitely Strapping.'

— Devin Townsend

You can tell when a writer moves out of a place of struggle and into a place of comfort, and it's always…

— Eleanor Catton

I personally feel the most vulnerable when I write. That's where I learned to tell the truth when I was young.

— Jewel

I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the…

— Richard Dawkins

“As more and more norms disappear from social praxis, literature faces ever-growing difficulties. Its predicament is beginning to resemble that of a…

— Stanisław Lem

“What happened is the least of it. It’s a novel, and once you’ve finished a novel, what happened in it is of…

— Javier Marías

I used to think that when I finished a book, I was finished with it. But it's like a wonderful Hydra. Every…

— Tony Buzan

“What's wrong?" he asked. "What's wrong?" she repeated. "I don't know what's going on here but you need to put that book…

— Alfred M. Struthers

“I think that to be a good writer, you have to put yourself on the line, you have to think deeply about…

— Marilynne Robinson

I often feel that I have a split personality. I love more than anything to be in my study writing, but when…

— Ann Hood

“Go ahead, throw this book away. Spit on me. Revile me. I dare you. Cast me out of your intellectual orbit. Throw…

— Anne Rice

“The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for…

— Oscar Wilde

When I write, I love finding connections between ideas. When the connections are plentiful and strong, then I know it's a pretty…

— William Gurstelle

“Literature is not a game for the cloistered elect. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for…

— John Steinbeck

“Flowers don't tell, they show. That's the way good books should be too."--Stephanie Skeem. Author of Flotsam”

— Stephanie Skeem

Incarcerated individuals want what most people want in a novel: good, honest writing and a story well told.

— George Pelecanos

“Not everyone is meant to be a writer," Shyla said. "I do believe, however, that everyone has a story within them to…

— Barbara Casey

For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has…

— Spencer Tracy

“A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite…

— Roman Payne

I think it's hard to have a full-time job and write fiction, but for essays, you need to be in the world.

— Sloane Crosley

Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

No literature is richer than that of the sea. No story is more enthralling, no tradition is more secure.

— Felix Riesenberg

A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert…

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit…

— Johann Georg Hamann

Although I did admire David Foster Wallace's final unfinished novel about boredom, I'm no DFW, and I want my books to be…

— Chris Pavone

It's a weird business. You're trying to write something that's built on magic, which is pretty stressful.

— Andy Grammer

“I always wanted to write a book, but it looked really hard: how did you get all the lines to come out…

— Mary Norris

As a writer of fiction, I spend my days inventing real lives for make-believe people; what I create can only seem real.

— Julia Glass

“People ask what's up with this writing business? What do I hope to accomplish? I tell 'em I'm just a brick mason;…

— Quentin R. Bufogle

“All serious and good writing anticipates precisely this kind of reading-ruminative and leisurely, a dalliance with words in contrast to wolfing down…

— Eugene H. Peterson

It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want…

— Tennessee Williams

People just don't know how to write down a simple easy line. It's difficult for them; it's like trying to keep a…

— Charles Bukowski

I get asked a lot what books I recommend for a nursery, home library, etc., and I always tell parents to start…

— Rebecca Serle

I obtained a job at the Library of Congress. I loved books, so I felt at home. I was going to end…

— Tom Glazer

A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner; it is much better to be confined to a…

— Seneca the Younger

You may well ask me why...I took the time to write [books]. I can only reply that I do not know. There…

— George Bernard Shaw