Common Quote by John Fowles

The triumph of writing fiction is that by doing so, writers can build a more ideal world in themselves.

— Lauren Groff

Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.

— Irwin Shaw

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.

— Thomas Berger

Some people think that writers are innately solitary and that there's a kind of romance to that solitariness. I tend to think that what…

— Richard Ford

Novelists should be free to write whatever they want, to let their imaginations roam as close to or as removed from reality as they…

— Sarah Weinman

The function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.

— Nadine Gordimer

Writing novels is a way of living alternative lives.

— Melvyn Bragg

“Writing novels allows the novelist to spend much of his time in a fictional world, which is really the only or at least the…

— Javier Marías

I think many writers write because it's a convenient way to explain themselves to themselves. We take the chaos and the turmoil and the…

— Armistead Maupin

Many people who want to be writers don't really want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a…

— James A. Michener

Writers are a fascinating breed, because there are so many kinds of them, they are made by so many circumstances, conditions, and mysteries, and…

— William Saroyan

To read and to write. Some writers have to be told to write. They think their job is to meet agents and have experiences…

— Ursula K. Le Guin