“What's this "rough life of a novelist" bullshit? You sound like an idiot. You're a writer. At least give yourself better lines.” — Maki Murakami Copy Share Image
I have become convinced that we blacks spend too much time on the playing field and too little time in libraries. — Arthur Ashe Copy Share Image
You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book? — Gabrielle Zevin Copy Share Image
It's the stuff that happens right in front of your face when there's no routine and everything is unexpected. That's what I… — Harvey Pekar Copy Share Image
“The job of the writer isn't to answer questions. The job of the writer is to ask the questions for which there… — Jens Porup Copy Share Image
“I have built a city from the books I've read. A good book sings a a timeless music that is heard in… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Literature is no one’s private ground, literature is common ground; let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
If you're trying to be a successful writer, and you go into a second-hand bookshop, it's the graveyard of people whose books… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I once, when I was in the middle of making the move from Europe to the U.S., I started trying to put… — King Diamond Copy Share Image
So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the… — Ralph Ellison Copy Share Image
It's a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you can have a private life,… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
My job is to get people to write something truthful, something about truth and beauty - wherever they are - and to… — Grace Paley Copy Share Image
For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree… — Mary Wollstonecraft Copy Share Image
“I recommend readers to be adventurous and to try things they’ve never heard of or considered reading before. Get out of the… — Carlos Ruiz Zafón Copy Share Image
“Take a shower. Wash away every trace of yesterday. Of smells. Of weary skin. Get dressed. Make coffee, windows open, the sun… — Charlotte Eriksson Copy Share Image
“No, no, it's not the books you are looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, in… — Ray Bradbury Copy Share Image
“Reading" had always been my lifeline-- an escape to that imaginary world where hurts were fictional and endings happy...” — Phyllis Whitney Copy Share Image
Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars… — William Penn Copy Share Image
“But preserve your mistrust of the page, for a book is a fortress, a place of weeping, the key to a desert,… — Sofia Samatar Copy Share Image
Writing has made me rich-not in money but in a couple hundred characters out there, whose pursuits and anguish and triumphs I've… — Wright Morris Copy Share Image
I'll tell you what I was most surprised to discover about my writing process, and that is that I never know what… — Sharon Cameron Copy Share Image
I tried writing out a plot with the second or third novel I wrote, and it was so boring, so desperately boring. — Philip Pullman Copy Share Image
“It's because of the way you are. It's why you're happy reading novels. You're only comfortable with a piece of the world… — Lan Samantha Chang Copy Share Image
I've kept journals at many times in my life starting from when I was about 13 or 14. But it's boring and… — Erica Jong Copy Share Image
The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the… — Willa Cather Copy Share Image
There is nothing wrong with a writer who has a distinct style in book after book, but I am not interested in… — Jay Neugeboren Copy Share Image
I had the offer to write books plenty of times during the early stage of my career, and I always kind of… — Tim Howard Copy Share Image
“I aspire to be an inspirer, not a mentor. As such it would be fulfilling to know that someone read what I… — Gloria D. Gonsalves Copy Share Image
One area I have a huge amount of trouble in is writing about myself. I get a heavy, almost depressed feeling. — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I work full-time in a used bookstore. I get up. I drink a cup of coffee. I think, The last thing I… — Kate DiCamillo Copy Share Image
Writing itself is a bad enough trade, rightly held up to ridicule and contempt by the greater part of mankind, and especially… — Hilaire Belloc Copy Share Image
I see a skill developing of writing about not just feelings that I'm feeling, but things that I deeply care about as… — Ezra Furman Copy Share Image
It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Writers are interested in a diverse range of subjects, but prefer to move from field to field to satisfy intellectual curiosity, rather… — Robert W. Bly Copy Share Image
I tell my students there is such a thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. You shouldn't write through it.… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have… — Henry Ward Beecher Copy Share Image
Everybody since the '60s has been saying the nation is a fiction - the nation is an imaginary unity - but people… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
Editors are more concerned with the first chapters of a book; that's what everyone reads first in the bookstore or in the… — Mary Roach Copy Share Image
Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws. — John Adams Copy Share Image
Everyone assumes that novelists are smarter and more interesting. They're generally smarter and more interesting, but they're often very short. So it… — Liev Schreiber Copy Share Image
