Early life Quote by J. M. Coetzee

I can't tell you any more than any other writer can tell you why they write, and I don't know what my influences are.

— Jean M. Auel

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they're just…

— Terry Pratchett

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

— Aldous Huxley

Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to…

— Kimberly Willis Holt

If you ask me now, I think every single writer whose work I've read has had some influence upon me, and I continue to…

— Vera Nazarian

“We have our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal in the air and…

— Virginia Woolf

Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

One likes to think one grows as a writer as one ages, else all you get is an old young writer. Beyond that is…

— Raymond E. Feist

Bad writers have influences. Good writers steal.

— S.M. Stirling

I've learned over the years that the writing is smarter and far larger than the writer and his or her own desires for it.

— Andre Dubus

The most enviable writers are those who, quite often unanalytically and unconsciously, have realized that there are different facets to their nature and are…

— Dorothea Brande

What is written is more influential than what is said.

— James Cook