Character Quote by Susan Straight

Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.

— Robert Penn Warren

“I am certain that a novelist is someone who attributes a different reality-value to the characters and events of his story than to those…

— Alain Robbe-Grillet

The real writer is one who really writes.

— Marge Piercy

“Writers of literature, if they are real writers, know that their readers are confused about reality and the emotions derived from that reality and…

— Noah Cicero

“The writer’s special talent is to empathize with people and imagine their lives. We know them as we write them.”

— Kay Kenyon

I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their story looms…

— Rick Bass

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

“A writer doesn't dream of riches and fame, though those things are nice. A true writer longs to leave behind a piece of themselves,…

— CK Webb

… the truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element…

— Derek Walcott

All of us, writers and non-writers alike, have incredible well-springs of personal experience and history. And we also have imagination - which I think…

— Ayana Mathis

“There are writers who write for fame. And there are writers who write because we need to make sense of the world we live…

— bell hooks

Never forget that the truest luxury is imagination, and that being a writer gives you the leeway to exploit all of the imagination's curious…

— Andrew Solomon