Writing Quotes · Page 335

Whenever I run out of people to write about, I cook up a few ghosts, or they appear before me.

— Ruskin Bond

I don't always understand my characters. I write to understand them better.

— Dacia Maraini

“Felicia’s Journey by the Irish short-story writer and novelist William Trevor.”

— Will Schwalbe

I was never interested in writing novelizations. I'm still not. Especially not for 'Star Wars.'

— Matthew Stover

People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.

— Flannery O'Connor

I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.

— Elmore Leonard

Both writing and thinking, like children, require plenty of patience till growing up.

— Mariana Fulger

I've been a writer for 42 years and, yes, it is a full time job for me. Not a hobby, but serious work.

— Donald McKay

I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.

— Clive James

When I write in Hebrew, I don't look for sophistication in music; it's just pure emotion that comes out.

— Yael Naim

My works are all expressly my own - pleasingly peculiar, not a borrowed stroke in one of them. I write as I…

— Amanda McKittrick Ros

I made a conscious decision that I was not going to have children. I didn't want others raising them, and looking after…

— Stevie Nicks

My writing is a product of how I would interact with things that have happened to me or things that have not…

— Rupi Kaur

I trained as a writer before I became a lawyer. I was headed for a life as an English professor, but that…

— Scott Turow

“A good editor can make a respectable writer remarkable, just like a good parent helps a child become amazing.”

— Justin Alcala

“Writing allows us to row the mind into new, unanticipated directions, change our stream of consciousness, and alter our very being.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“Just as the universal family of gifted writers transcends national barriers, so is the gifted reader a universal figure, not subject to…

— Vladimir Nabokov

I remember my first agent telling me - because they found me as an actor, but I was probably more interested in…

— Chadwick Boseman

When Basquiat was hanging out with Madonna and Fab Five Freddy, and all those worlds were colliding, people have to realize hip-hop…

— Jay-Z

The more boring a newspaper is, the more it is respected. The most respected newspaper in the United States is The New…

— Dave Barry

There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I…

— Theodore Roosevelt

Tom [Collins] was a great influence on me. He really pushed me...constantly demanded rewrites. And, as much as I despised them, it…

— Dean Dillon

“My sense is that if you go far enough in any stylistic direction, you can make a beautiful and complex representation of…

— George Saunders

What Malcolm X did not know is that back in 1962, a collaborator of Alex Haley, fellow named - a journalist named…

— Manning Marable

In the marriage, dialogues and sounds of the woman are written and directed by the man.

— Vikrant Parsai

“...all kinds of images swim like tropical fish in the bathysphere inside my skull ...”

— John Geddes

So much of writing is done alone in a room in sweatpants, with only the Internet for company.

— Lauren Weisberger

Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements.

— Amit Ray

I love the fact that you collaborate with your readers when you write a book.

— Robert Crais

I believe in a visual language that should be as strong as the written word.

— David LaChapelle

“Creativity without discipline will struggle, creativity with discipline will succeed.”

— Amit Kalantri

All romances end in tragedy. One of the key people in a romance becomes a monster sooner or later.

— David Cronenberg

Writing is a way of drifting within my own mind: almost a solitary process, so to speak.

— Twinkle Khanna

My own accumulation of influences is actually what made me a writer in the first place.

— Andrew Sean Greer

Mom - the person most likely to write an autobiography and never mention herself.

— Robert Breault

People ask me if I have comedy writers, and I'm like, 'Are you kidding me?'

— Ana Navarro

It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.

— Antonio Tabucchi

“Let your characters lead when you're dancing together.”

— Caron Kamps Widden

“The wastepaper basket is the writer’s best friend. ”

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.

— William Zinsser