Alive Quote by Helen Dunmore

This is the gift all writers seek-to write language that incandesces yet does not melt.

— Lawrence Clark Powell

I find it hugely exciting to be dealing with another writer's language.

— Johnny Flynn

Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring.

— Joyce Carol Oates

“There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Fenimore Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now.”

— Mark Twain

In a country this large and a language even larger ... there ought to be a living for somebody who cares and wants to…

— John Updike

All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive…

— Ali Smith

The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

— Raymond Chandler

There is simply a better chance of doing well if the writer holds a steady course, enters the stream of English quietly, and does…

— E. B. White

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not…

— Jennifer Egan

“language – particularly the language writers use – cannot be set in stone. It is a living, organic, ever-changing thing.”

— John Sutherland

In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.

— Robert Morgan

There's a whole language out there, and one's role as a writer is to stumble around in it.

— Ciaran Carson