Skip to content

Writing Quotes by Anna Quindlen

48 Writing quotes by Anna Quindlen

All Writing quotes Anna Quindlen’s page

Anna Quindlen points out that stories about happy lives are often the hardest to write. She says avoiding writing leads nowhere, yet she sometimes tries not to write as a habit. She also notes that novels move farther from personal autobiography as she keeps writing.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Not writing at all leads to nothing.

Image

I do a lot of mental work before I ever start writing.

Image

It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.

Image

My most pronounced writing habit is trying not to write.

Image

Writing seems to be the only profession people imagine you can do by thinking about doing it.

Image

The New Testament has had a really powerful effect on how I write and how I live my life.

Image

I know a lot and have written a lot and have thought a lot about motherhood.

Image

The truth is that when you're writing a novel you're really living in it; you're living in the house, and you're living…

Image

When I write a novel, I have what I think of as an icon that helps get me into the world of…

Image

Women writers of all people should know better than to pigeonhole women, put them in little groups, the smart one, the sweet…

Image

A writer is always working with whatever she's managed to store in the brainpan or puzzle out about the world.

Image

You write to suit some sense in yourself and trust that that will resonate with a certain wider readership.

Image

The beginning and the end are never really the journey of discovery for me. It is the middle that remains a puzzle…

Image

I always wanted to be a fiction writer, but I couldn't figure out how you could be a novelist and make any…

Image

Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word…

Image

People ask me all the time if I'm from a family of writers. The literal short answer is no, but my father…

Image

Reporters are not paid to operate in retrospect. Because when news begins to solidify into current events and finally harden intohistory, it…

Image

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who…

Image

You realize that especially when you're writing a book like this, looking back on your life, that there's just such a depth…

Image

If you want to write what the world is about, you have to write details...real life is in the dishes. Real life…

Image

Uncontrollable consumerism has become a watchword of our culture despite regular and compelling calls for its end. The United States has more…

Image

“Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird…

Image

The 1992 US Olympic basketball team is the best sports team ever, the equivalent of rounding up the greatest American writers of…

Image

I'm boggled by the idea of being an only child. I know nothing at all (I'm happy to say) about having had…

Image

Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on…

Image

Well, I'd like to think I am, and I'd also like to think that we're all having a lot more fun getting…

Image

At the same time that you've got to open yourself up to the fact that experience is going to teach you year…

Image

“Who says great literatue has to be written by men? Who says great literature has to be about scary, creepy stuff like…

Image

I think I'm like most novelists in that my books have gotten farther and farther away from autobiography the longer I've been…

Image

I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society.

Image

I hadn't written a love story before and I hadn't written a novel with a happy ending before.

Image

Jane Austen may not be the best writer, but she certainly writes about the best people. And by that I mean people…

Image

“There are only two ways, really, to become a writer. One is to write. The other is to read.”

Image

“I've discovered that sometimes writing badly can eventually lead to something better. Not writing at all leads to nothing.”

Image

I'm writing this memoir from the perspective of somebody who's prosperous and has means. Having said that, one of the things that…

Image

I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are…

Image

Let me say first that reading is my favorite pastime, bar none. If I couldn't read, I don't know what I'd do.…

Image

“I know who we are, and how we got that way. We are writers. We danced with the words, as children, in…

Image

Novels are usually built on conflict, sometimes very, very difficult conflict. It's why men write war novels - because there you go,…

Image

I don't really read what people write about me. Someone gives my novel one star; are they a troll? Are they someone…

Image

Other authors on Writing

More by Anna Quindlen

I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are to write,…

Trying to be perfect may be inevitable for people who are smart and ambitious and interested in the world and its good opinion...What is…

Sometimes change came all at once, with a sound like a fire taking hold of dry wood and paper, with a roar that rose…

Loss as muse. Loss as character. Loss as life.

knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us.

You teach your 16-year-old with your heart in your mouth to be a good driver and none of that makes any difference when some…

Every reader, I suspect, has a book like this somewhere in his or her past, a book that seemed to hold within it, at…

“I’ve finally recognized my body for what it is: a personality-delivery system, designed expressly to carry my character from place to place, now and…

A man who builds his own pedestal had better use strong cement.

“In England I am always madam; I arrived too late to ever be a miss. In New York I have only been madamed once,…

“Yet there was always in me, even when I was very small, the sense that I ought to be somewhere else. And wander I…

I can't think of a single downside to motherhood now.

It would take a helluva man to replace no man at all.

Not writing at all leads to nothing.

Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. "Book love," Trollope called it. "It will make your hours pleasant to…