“If you're not scared when you are writing you're not working hard enough. You'll be afraid but you have to keep going.” — M. Molly Backes Copy Share Image
“If you become a writer you'll be trying to describe the ?Thing all your life: and lucky if, out of dozens of… — C.S. Lewis Copy Share Image
I'm not patient - and I'm getting more impatient as I get older - but I am disciplined about writing, and I… — Douglas Coupland Copy Share Image
I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I… — John Jeremiah Sullivan Copy Share Image
I am generally wary of the demand for 'likeability' in fiction, which I think is a bastardisation of the demand of identification… — Katie Kitamura Copy Share Image
Montaigne simply turns his mind loose and writes whatever he feels like writing. Mostly, he wants to say that reason is not… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Diverting the internal traffic between the Writer as Angel of Light and the Writer as Hustler is that scribbling child in a… — Herbert Gold Copy Share Image
When we read a book, we have a blurry image that's kind of physical but blurry. But we have an emotional image… — Niels Arden Oplev Copy Share Image
I write exclusively using computers. Pens and typewriters can fsck right off - I wrote my first half million words in my… — Charles Stross Copy Share Image
The film industry sees the writer as fungible: The thinking goes, As long as we have Brad Pitt and all this money,… — Melissa Rosenberg Copy Share Image
We have a host of English teachers in the family. My mum is an English teacher, and so are my dad, my… — Alexandra Adornetto Copy Share Image
The French are pretty thin-skinned. The few times I mentioned a French writer in 'City Boy,' the relatives would ring up in… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
When I was in the eighth grade, I wrote this huge long paper about how I had no idea what I was… — Shantel VanSanten Copy Share Image
“We have no time to waste on insignificant books, hollow books, books that are there to please... We want books that cost… — Laurence Cossé Copy Share Image
Good writing is good writing. In many ways, it’s the audience and their expectations that define a genre. A reader of literary… — Rosemary Clement-Moore Copy Share Image
These days, my subjects are murder and mayhem and other terrible things that happen to people - things that are even worse… — Linwood Barclay Copy Share Image
Each time I read a book, I cataloged the parts that struck me dumb with envy and admiration for their beauty and… — Jack Gantos Copy Share Image
How can you tell? That I like books, I mean. The look on your face when you walked in, somehow I doubted… — Cassandra Clare Copy Share Image
I like to write about lots of things in real life that people can relate to, that people can I guess connect… — Cody Simpson Copy Share Image
Just about everybody has written a first novel that they throw away before writing their actual first novel. — Daniel Handler Copy Share Image
“and although the young writer never met his literary mentor, the spiritual connection between the two writers would never be dissolved.” — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
[Preface to second edition:] ... I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex… — Anne Bronte Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
SPOOKER, n. A writer whose imagination concerns itself with supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks. — Ambrose Bierce Copy Share Image
Lest it sound as if I resent my day job, I have to say that my day job is the reason I… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“When that little clock on my wall says “Olaotan! Olaotan!! Olaotan!!! It’s half past time to write”, I only have three things… — Olaotan Fawehinmi Copy Share Image
Dorothy B. Hughes - there's a robust elegance to her writing that I keep responding to again and again. I've read her… — Sarah Weinman Copy Share Image
Our children shouldn't have to wait for adulthood to become wild readers. For many, it will be too late. — Donalyn Miller Copy Share Image
It is hard for me to speak of themes. I like the reader to do that. Otherwise it feels like writing a… — Tim Winton Copy Share Image
I can write anywhere. I actually wrote more than I ever did when I had small children. My children were never a… — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
“Reading was what I needed to beat back all that noise and silence, those horrible silences. . . .An ink pen was… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
“The great thing about writing fiction is that you can do whatever the fuck you want, go as far as you are… — Richard Denney Copy Share Image
I spend my happiest hours in reading Vedantic books. They are to me like the light of the morning, like the pure… — Max Muller Copy Share Image
Usually, when somebody really hates your book, they're not going to waste time on it, telling you what you need to work… — Jay Asher Copy Share Image
I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing.… — Tanith Lee Copy Share Image
What I found so captivating about the idea of being a writer was having the ability to write down all these things… — Kameron Hurley Copy Share Image
In matters editorial, I am a believer in totalitarian despotism. Most writers are lazy, difficult, selfish, thoughtless, and unreliable. — John Derbyshire Copy Share Image
The Bookshop has a thousand books, All colors, hues, and tinges, And every cover is a door That turns on magic hinges. — Nancy Byrd Turner Copy Share Image