I do not set specific work hours as some writers do. I generally stay with a chapter until I am satisfied, do… — Sharon Kay Penman Copy Share Image
Maybe at 20 you can write well, but I don't think you could do what I do. Some things have to happen… — Ellen Goodman Copy Share Image
“Fiction should always challenge what you believe in, and make you think hard about what it is to be a human being.” — Joe Mynhardt Copy Share Image
Even if you're just making a list of all the things you have to do, putting your pen to paper gets it… — Gabrielle Bernstein Copy Share Image
Sometimes people run out and read a lot of books, but they don't absorb anything from them. They want to read the… — Echo Bodine Copy Share Image
Now that I have written many words, and let out so many loves, for so many, and been altogether what I always… — Anne Sexton Copy Share Image
For most people who write, writing is a compulsion. If I could be healed of it, I would, and I think a… — T. R. Pearson Copy Share Image
I tell beginning readers to read a lot and write a lot. If you want to write a book, find a subject… — Tracy Kidder Copy Share Image
Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
When I write a book I'm always questioning the project as a whole. I always feel I might have to just throw… — Daniel Kehlmann Copy Share Image
I have found that in fiction one is freer to speak the truth, if only because in fiction the truth is not… — Philip Sington Copy Share Image
To contest an author's right to create a poetic or realistic work is to want to force him to change his temperament,… — Guy de Maupassant Copy Share Image
“First, there must be talent, much talent. Talent such as Kipling had. Then there must be discipline. The discipline of Flaubert. Then… — Ernest Hemingway Copy Share Image
“The other thing that’s happened with writing is that I’m not afraid it will go away. Up until a couple of years… — Marsha L. Larsen Copy Share Image
It's pretty cool that artists like Flo Rida and Bingo Players can be inspired to interpret a song like 'Piano in the… — Brenda Russell Copy Share Image
All fiction relies on the real world in the sense that we all take in the world through our five senses and… — Rohinton Mistry Copy Share Image
I'm trying to think of other ones. Oh, yeah, I'd say - somebody would buy something and we'd say, and because you… — Steve Martin Copy Share Image
I don't believe in writer's block. I don't know what that is. There are just certain little areas that I know I'm… — Elmore Leonard Copy Share Image
Holly Black is the Real Thing: a gifted writer with a solid grounding in what matters. Her stories are dark and splendid… — Ellen Kushner Copy Share Image
The most 'popular,' the most 'successful' writers among us (for a brief period, at least) are, 99 times out of a hundred,… — Edgar Allan Poe Copy Share Image
I wanted to be a writer, but the idea of writing novels or movies seemed really intimidating. I never got more than… — Kurt Busiek Copy Share Image
The librarian's mission should be, not like up to now, a mere handling of the book as an object, but rather a… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth. — Gao Xingjian Copy Share Image
I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts. — John McGahern Copy Share Image
“If a novelist were so uncouth and possessed of so little moral sense that he should write of illicit love, his book… — Clyde Brion Davis Copy Share Image
“I read all kinds of novels, as long as they’re good. I get a bit piqued when people say, 'I don’t really… — Gillian Flynn Copy Share Image
This, indeed, is one of the eternal paradoxes of both life and literature-that without passion little gets done; yet, without control of… — F. L. Lucas Copy Share Image
Sir Francis Bacon observed that a well-written book, compared with its rivals and antagonists, is like Moses' serpent, that immediately swallowed up… — Joseph Addison Copy Share Image
My way of telling stories is kind of what I do naturally. It's no different from how I would talk to you… — Henry Cho Copy Share Image
I picked up my college copy of 'The Great Gatsby' in an attempt to recover from the movie and was interested to… — Gail Collins Copy Share Image
And then I wrote my first autobiography when I - well, it was 23 years ago. And since then I've written about… — Joan Collins Copy Share Image
James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
There is a big difference between he who reads just because he knows how to read and he who does understand what… — Wagner T Matioli Copy Share Image
That's the interesting thing about writing. You can start late, you can be ignorant of things, and yet, if you work hard… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
A writer is nothing but a gray dirt-covered root. The works he sends up into the sunlight are his fruits, and only… — Herman Wouk Copy Share Image
I was writing fiction steadily, but I found that the stark determinisms of code were a welcome relief from the ambiguities of… — Vikram Chandra Copy Share Image
Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine… — Ba Jin Copy Share Image
I collect books and I have some really, really old schoolbooks, and God is mentioned on every single page. — Dave Mustaine Copy Share Image
“An intelligent man will use a book to settle an argument. Preferably a hardback with a thick spine, flat across the bridge… — Shatrujeet Nath Copy Share Image
I like the busy-ness of office life. What I discovered, to my surprise, is that I love the solitary nature of writing.… — Joseph Kanon Copy Share Image
