Books For Writers Quotes

#1. Well, the world has a million writers. One would think, then, that good thought would be as familiar as air and water, and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count all our good books; nay, I remember any beautiful verse for twenty years.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#2. Some of the most untidy writers have also been the most productive. Iris Murdoch, for instance, wrote a good 30 books in a house strewn with rubbish.

Craig Brown

#3. My best advice for aspiring writers is to read a lot and write. Don't worry if you don't get your first, fifth or tenth novel published, if you keep going you'll make it. Also read "how to write" books as they may make the process a bit quicker.

Katie Fforde

#4. For a tiny speck in the Atlantic, Ireland has made an outsize contribution to world literature. It's a legacy we can all be proud of, one that would take many pages (or indeed a whole library of books) to recount in full.

Rashers Tierney

#5. A lot of the time writers are just sponges ... for what's around them, and so books are helpful for focusing your mind and literally putting it into words.

Marcus Mumford

#6. Writers Are Insane. For months we are lone wolves locked in our caves. Then overnight we become publicity hounds. It's a schizophrenic business.

Robert Mykle

#7. A book, a true book, is the writer's confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed, directly or indirectly, by his characters, into presenting publicly his innermost feelings.

Nelson Algren

#8. I would love to write more children's books. There is such a high standard out there for children's books; there are really amazing writers. It is a fantastic creative outlet and such an amazing teaching tool. The thing I love about kids, too, is it is so imaginative and poetic.

Jewel

#9. God preserve us from writers who regurgitate what they have learnt from books! It is people's secrets we want to know - it is the natural history of the human heart that we have been trying to put down for a thousand years and everyone must and can leave their contribution.

August Strindberg

#10. She quotes Robert Louis Stevenson about how young writers must read like predators. And she says that all of us, not just writers, must read like predators. For books are food, she said, for every single one of us.

Pete Hamill

#11. Most people think that making a living from books is fun or joyful, but there's much more to it than what the eyes can see, and I wish I had more time for more profitable and also joyful activities.

Robin Sacredfire

#12. Look for your heros in the books people write, not in the people who write books.

Ozzie Cheek

#13. For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me.

Betsy Byars

#14. I'm not into writing many more books or more pages. My goal is to increase the value of each sentence I write. And for that, I have to just erase my past and bring only forward what matches the new me, things I can easily rewrite and adapt to my new perspective.

Robin Sacredfire

#15. That's another argument for writing: making something that outlasts you.

Zia Haider Rahman

#16. Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.

Kate DiCamillo

#17. I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written for another thirty or forty years. But perhaps this is true of most writers - the emotional storage is done very early on.

Marguerite Yourcenar

#18. Salter is a writer who particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure. He is among the very few North American writers all of whose work I want to read, whose as-yet-unpublished books I wait for impatiently.

Susan Sontag

#19. For writers, handing a manuscript off to an editor is like walking into a parole hearing. You've done the time but wonder if it's going to satisfy the judge.

Shandy L. Kurth

#20. Some newer writers worry about books set in Canada having a big appeal, but it has never been an issue for me. I haven't wanted to write in the States because I don't know the States.

Chevy Stevens

#21. A hammer made of deadlines is the surest tool for crushing writer's block.

Ryan Lilly

#22. We weave together the many skeins of our words,
Into poems and stories and books,
And the books are made so much more vivacious and colourful,
For all the care that is woven in along with the words.

Bree Verity

#23. My fingers burn behind the keys of my typewriter, the lettering fading with every thoughtful strike. The many words I write I dare not stall; my mind perpetually alert for my magnum opus call.

A.K. Kuykendall

#24. When entering a library, I never forget to bow down!

Avijeet Das

#25. I have nothing but praise for J. K. Rowling. Her contribution - apart from the books themselves, obviously - is showing writers how to interact with the 21st Century.

Terry Hayes

#26. The word 'NO' is the best motivation there is for the storyteller in you.

A.K. Kuykendall

#27. Every writer or wanna-be writer has ideas for books. The problem isn't finding an idea, it's choosing one

Jo Linsdell

#28. You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

Madeleine L'Engle

#29. For commercial books in a genre, readers' and editors' expectations may be fairly rigid. Some romance lines, for instance, issue fairly detailed writers' guidelines explaining exactly what must happen in a book they publish (and what must not).

Nancy Kress

#30. I like to read as much as I can from every genre. That way, I can express my love for all writers.

Jen Selinsky

#31. Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.

Iris Chang

#32. Max said little. His essential quality was always to say little, but by powerful empathy for writers and for books to draw out of them what they had it in them to say and to write.

A. Scott Berg

#33. Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth.

Dr. Seuss

#34. He (Mario Vargas Llosa) looks grave, transported. And there, I think, is the personality that wrote the books: one in which a subversive comic sense and appetite for the ridiculous jostle with an intense, statesmanlike seriousness about the business of being alive.

Tim Martin

#35. Books can change the world. They represent a second chance for those that want to change their life and can't.

Robin Sacredfire

#36. Certain unique books seem to be without forerunners or successors as far as their authors are concerned. Even though they may profoundly influence the work of other writers, for their creator they're complete, not leading anywhere.

Dodie Smith

#37. If all shy, soulful young women who dreamed of becoming writers for a living actually could do that, imagine the library we would have.

Sarah Elwell

#38. I love those adult writers with the pranking ethos, [Don] DeLillo and [Donald] Barthelme and David Foster Wallace. I don't see any reason not to bring those kinds of influences to bear on books for children.

Mac Barnett

#39. James Altucher reminds me for Stephen King... when is about Stephen King his 2 sons, probably the one or no,no both they look like him.

Deyth Banger

#40. Don't ever trust anyone who's writing a book. They make up lies for a living.

Rosemary Clement-Moore

#41. There are some great, subversive female writers out there. Gender should not affect anything. It does, but it shouldn't.

Carla H. Krueger

#42. I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.

Eleanor Catton

#43. Writing is about taking everyday observations, things which people see almost every day of their lives, and yet bringing it to their attention for the very first time.

Jamie L. Harding

#44. Fiction is risky for writers also in that the process of making certain books, of shaping certain narratives, leaves scars and marks on your inner life.

Chris Abani

#45. Read different to think differently; world is already into rat race.

Aman Jassal

#46. These writers take the essence of every person around them, turn them into books and stories without permission or even a simple thank-you, and want all the credit and glory for themselves.

Matthew Pearl

#47. Having had virtually no contact with the outside world for the last few weeks, Evan had temporarily forgotten the social norms governing shopping conduct or approaching celebrities in public.

Zack Love

#48. I have started a new blog W.A.R.(Writers Amongst Readers) for all those writing or reading books. Quotes, excerpts, comments from the world's greatest writers. See robinhawdonblog

Robin Hawdon

#49. People can't read a book if they don't know it exists. All authors need to do marketing, regardless of how they published.

Jo Linsdell

#50. God has not any Holy Book; but Man has many Holy Book writers! Producing Holy Books is a cosmic crime against the God! God has not spoken yet! He has been silent for billions of years, because He is out of this universe!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#51. I am hoping to work with writers publishing books for first time, since I of course remember what that experience is like. It's all a bit of a mystery for new authors who don't know what to expect.

Rebecca Stead

#52. Reviews are for readers, not writers. If I get a bad one, I shrug it off. If I get a good one, I don't believe it

William Meikle

#53. The illustrators work so much harder on the books than the writers do. I mean, that's so much work doing what they do, and it's terrible for them.

Michael Ian Black

#54. Writers just play out their fantasies in their books. They are often very unstable, tricky people, Bertie. Writers are usually very bad at real life and feel that they have to create imaginary lives to make up for it.

Alexander McCall Smith

#55. People who don't read fiction are scared of what's inside their own heads.

Carla H. Krueger

#56. Many of us would not make terribly interesting characters in a novel.

Claire Wingfield

#57. It was really written as most, I think, books are by writers - for themselves. There was something that just had to be written, in a way that it had to be written. If you know what I mean.

Norton Juster

#58. I think books and movies are going to go a long way together in the future. I think we writers are very important material for directors.

Tatiana De Rosnay

#59. For some reason, when people meet me and find out I'm a writer they always ask if I write children's books. Um ... please don't let your kids read my books. Well, unless your kids are in their 30s or something ... then yeah, they're old enough. LOL

Michelle M. Pillow

#60. It has always been very difficult for writers to survive commercially in India because the market was so small. But that's not true at all any more. It's one of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant markets for books, especially in English.

Aravind Adiga

#61. All writers are waiting for replies. That's what I've learned. Maybe all human beings are

Niall Williams

#62. The e-book does seem at the moment to threaten the livelihood of writers, because the way in which writers are paid for their work in the form of e-books is very much up in the air.

Graham Swift

#63. Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books that is about how amazing books are and how amazing the people who write books are. Writers love writing books like this, and for some reason, we let them get away with it.

Josh Lieb

#64. when you read once, you get the understanding ; when you read twice, you get the second understanding. Don't just read, read!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#65. Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.

Alberto Manguel

#66. There are books that change our perspectives and books that change our personalities.

Carla H. Krueger

#67. For most of us, fanfiction is a non-issue. Even for midlist writers. We will never be popular enough for people to play in our worlds with any frequency. The problem for us is getting people to read and care about our books that much in the first place.

Catherynne M Valente

#68. If you write a kid's book only for kids, then you have failed.

Don Roff

#69. Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies.

Deana J. Driver

#70. He did not remember when he began to regard the heap of books on his desk with boredom and dread, or when he grew angry at writers for writing them. He did not remember when everything began to remind him of something else.

Tobias Wolff

#71. I've read plenty of amazing science pieces where the writers don't hang out in labs. I just have fun doing it. And I get rewarded for it; I get gushy, especially when kids tell me they expected to be bored by my books, but weren't.

Mary Roach

#72. It's better to be remembered for what you said, not what you earned.

Carla H. Krueger

#73. Television and cable have become the new independent films, in a sense, for writers and actors to gravitate towards. That's why I like short films, too; I love doing readings, audio books, working with young filmmakers; anything that keeps you from getting blase about yourself or in a rut.

Campbell Scott

#74. Our constant desire to genre-label cripples new writers. Let them experiment, explore and surprise.

Carla H. Krueger

#75. The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

Julian Barnes

#76. Bravery isn't brandishing a sword. It's standing your moral ground and letting others try their best to take you down.

Carla H. Krueger

#77. Books written out of fire give me a great deal of pleasure. You get the sense that the world for these writers could not have continued if the book hadn't been written. When you come across a book like that it is a privilege.

Hisham Matar

#78. I surround myself with books when I write, thus surrounding myself with writers... only they don't critique me and then get up for coffee.

Ryan Lilly

#79. Despite the fact that he loves books and owns a bookstore, A.J. does not particularly care for writers. He finds them to be unkempt, narcissistic, silly, and generally unpleasant people. He tries to avoid the ones who've written books he loves for fear that they will ruin their books for him.

Gabrielle Zevin