Character Quote by Cinda Williams Chima

The writer is all alone.

— V. S. Naipaul

Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language.

— Hilma Wolitzer

She has spent most of the day reading and is feeling rather out of touch with reality, as if her own life has become…

— Maggie O'Farrell

Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others,…

— Rebecca Solnit

Novel writing is solitary work.

— Mohsin Hamid

You have to really have a taste for being alone to be a writer.

— Paul Auster

“An author has to fit into the skin of her characters, to imagine being trapped by unfortunate and sometimes violent circumstances she herself has…

— Loretta H. Marion

Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel…

— Ann Patchett

Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved.

— David Foster Wallace

“Every writer is first a member of a community of readers, and the deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a…

— Jonathan Franzen

She is not a writer at all, really; she is merely a gifted eccentric.

— Michael Cunningham

“you can’t empathize, if you can’t or aren’t willing to put yourself into someone else’s place with all the compassion and insight you can…

— Joe Mynhardt