Quotes About Book Writing

#1. There is a tradition that sees journalism as the dark side of literature, with book writing at its zenith. I don't agree. I think that all written work constitutes literature, even graffiti.

Eduardo Galeano

#2. When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up an honest trade like shoe repair, cattle stealing, or screwworm management.

Edward Abbey

#3. The process of book writing for me is entirely one of trial and error.

Geoff Dyer

#4. The essays are very solipsistic and self-absorbed, I'm totally conscious of that. To me, book writing is fun, and I basically just write about things that are entertaining to myself.

Chuck Klosterman

#5. Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.

Chuck Klosterman

#6. book, Writing to Change the World,

Brene Brown

#7. As much fun as it is to read a book, writing a book is one level deeper than that.

Donna Tartt

#8. My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world.

V.S. Naipaul

#9. One of the pleasantest things about book writing is that sometimes it brings one in touch with old friends.

Rachel Field

#10. The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

John Steinbeck

#11. I havent been doin much comic book writing for the last several years though, as Ive been writing television projects and a novel.

Bill Mumy

#12. My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.

Anthony Trollope

#13. When I'm blogging, I think book writing is easier and vice versa. Writing is lonely work, and the good thing about blogging is that you have immediate feedback from commenters.

Jenny Lawson

#14. Sarah Palin - now don't laugh - is writing a book. Not just reading a book, writing a book. Actually, in the word of the publisher, she's 'collaborating' on a book. What an embarrassment! It's one of these 'I told you,' books that jocks do.

Chris Matthews

#15. I feel much more comfortable in politics than I did in book writing. Book writing is so hard. Politics felt easy compared to that.

Zephyr Teachout

#16. I come out of journalism, and then book writing. There, it's just you and your editor and maybe a copy desk, looking over your editor's shoulder, and that's the story. It's right there. I can show it to you because it's on paper.

Wendell Pierce

#17. Business book writing for me is when some set of ideas gets stuck in my mind, I write a book about it. I haven't got a theory and I haven't got a framework.

Tom Peters

#18. Book writing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Anyone who decides to write a book must expect to invest a lot of time and effort without any guarantee of success. Books do not write themselves and they do not sell themselves. Authors write and promote their books.

Dan Poynter

#19. Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.

Jerry B. Jenkins

#20. Book-writing is always much easier in other people's lives.

Tibor Fischer

#21. I love every part of the book writing process from the excitement of the initial idea to weaving all the tiny elements of the story from the air. I draw my inspiration from the landscape around me, from quirky characters I meet and from the strange and convoluted thoughts that dance between my ears.

JoAnne Graham

#22. I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and try to rewrite it.

Chuck Klosterman

#23. I keep my TV writing and my book writing almost wholly separate. The audiences feel so different.

Josh Lieb

#24. Mary Daheim writes with wit, wisdom, and a big heart. I love her books.

Carolyn Hart

#25. Emily wondered whether Artie would be so carefree if he knew The Book Club was performing grand theft imagination.

S.A. Tawks

#26. Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that.

Jane Yolen

#27. You will never know what fascinating book waits within ... Until you start writing!

Isis Charest

#28. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.

Carl Sagan

#29. When I'm assembling a book I concentrate as though I were writing a poem. A truly imagined arrangement will indicate gaps and generate new poems. I re-read the new poems in my folder in the hope that this might happen.

Michael Longley

#30. Good blurbs are short, sweet, and limited to six. They answer the question Why should I buy this book?

Guy Kawasaki

#31. It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#32. When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose.

Samuel Colbran

#33. I wrote a book. It sucked. I wrote nine more books. They sucked, too. Meanwhile, I read every single thing I could find on publishing and writing, went to conferences, joined professional organizations, hooked up with fellow writers in critique groups, and didn't give up. Then I wrote one more book.

Beth Revis

#34. I worked at magazines for over 10 years before I even thought of writing a book.

Dave Eggers

#35. Does it matter that people and things
Have words,
Have names?
If not,
Why read any book?
A litany of useless letters
Detached from bone, muscle.
Or are words the only things that make the muscle, bone, memory, movement,
Person
Real?

Stasia Ward Kehoe

#36. I still get enormous pleasure and a sense of fulfillment out of writing a book that I'm proud of. I see myself as a bit like a jewel-maker who can sit back and admire his work.

Wilbur Smith

#37. TV's not the problem, and I'm tired of it being posed as this antithesis to creativity and productivity. If TV's getting in your way of writing a book, then you don't want to write a book bad enough.

Andrea Seigel

#38. By the time you write the last page you have done half the book. The other half tends to get done in about five weeks; I do several drafts, very, very furiously rewriting. I literally do more or less nothing else and I stick with it and go through it and I begin to hate it.

Terry Pratchett

#39. You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books? I say 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?

Kurt Vonnegut

#40. I may have a general broad-based idea of what I want to write about when I sit down to write a book, but I don't have any idea of what it's going to say. I would call my experience of creativity 'inspired by God' to produce certain pieces of information that might be useful to others.

Neale Donald Walsch

#41. There is a heavy price to pay for writing a bad book.

Tony Burgess

#42. I once wrote deduceable instead of deducible in a book, though nobody then or since has taken me up on it. A small point as they go, perhaps, but Rule I of writing acceptably is to get everything right as far as you can, and in this case I had neglected to.

Kingsley Amis

#43. In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.

Rose Tremain

#44. When I'm writing a book, I don't have any responsibility to anyone. I'm solitary. I'm writing on my own. I write by hand. And I write every day. I mean, it's part of my daily discipline.

Patti Smith

#45. This isn't a religious book though I mention God, not a medical advisory though I speak of pain. It's a circus, a mortuary, a grade school, a limousine ride. Will it be worth the paper it's printed on or the screen you hold in your hand? I just hope you remember it next week.

Chila Woychik

#46. The time comes in life when we have read enough. It's time to stop reading. It's time to lay down the books and write.

Albert Einstein

#47. But we were different now. I wanted only his pain, and judging from the girl he'd come home with last night, Madoc was still the same. A user.

Penelope Douglas

#48. People are interested in writing, and often there's an unjustifiable sense of people to believe my talking to them for the book is going to accord them any sort of fame. Which it won't. At the same time, they can be more circumspect if they know they're on the record.

Jesse Kellerman

#49. I certainly wouldn't be writing books if it hadn't been for the feminist blogosphere, and I think that's a really amazing thing.

Jessica Valenti

#50. You're too busy writing the next book to worry about Googling yourself all the time.

Annette Curtis Klause

#51. Few people have written significant books about San Francisco. Robert Duncan was, in my opinion, often in the clouds. If he walked the streets a lot he didn't write about as such.

Stephen Vincent Benet

#52. The openness of such networked devices reflects our growing desire to construct writing in a way that breaks down the traditional distinctions between the book and such larger forms as the encyclopedia and the library.

Jay David Bolter

#53. Read a short story every day. By the end of the week you would have read volumes of stories.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#54. I really absolutely loved writing my first book.

Jill Davis

#55. I do not believe writers should read reviews of their own books, and I do not. If one is not careful one is soon writing to please reviewers and not their audience or themselves.

Louis L'Amour

#56. Sugar Ray and talked about doing some articles together or writing a book together but dealing with Sugar Ray was a lot like fighting him. He would fake you in and then he'd drop you.

Dick Schaap

#57. I like the idea that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing - that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around.

Markus Zusak

#58. For me, writing for kids is harder because they're a more discriminating audience. While adults might stay with you, if you lose your pacing or if you have pages of extraneous description, a kid's not going to do that. They will drop the book.

Rick Riordan

#59. If you would be remembered, write a book worth the reading or live a life worth the writing about.

Benjamin Franklin

#60. Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody.

Leonora Carrington

#61. It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated.

Jonathan Franzen

#62. Either way, you wrote the book and now you're complaining about the reviews I'm giving it," I quipped.
"Fair enough." He held up his hands, "I'm going to start writing the sequel which will be considerably less narcissistic. Will you read it?"
"Only if every other girl on campus hasn't.

Tarryn Fisher

#63. I'm probably the most loquacious author when it comes to my dedications. The reason is there is some symbolism there. I've been writing these books, bringing these stories to my readers who I love so much, and I have a greater love for my family.

Karen Kingsbury

#64. I used to split my time between writing, music and painting. I would work on a book and then abandon it, start a band, do an album, quit music, then do a gallery show. Eventually I decided to give writing a serious shot.

Isaac Marion

#65. A book acts as the getaway car when you need to escape.
Even when you're the one writing it.

Julie Wright

#66. When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no book I've ever written has ever ended the way I thought it would. Characters disappear, others come forward. Once you start writing, everything changes.

Paul Auster

#67. In mid-career, I was at one and the same time the rabbi of a major congregation, writing books, and teaching at Columbia. I didn't spend enough time with my children. Now, when I get an all-important call, I sometimes say that I'm having lunch with my granddaughter. And I do not apologize

Arthur Hertzberg

#68. Because of the wonderfully positive response to 'Life's That Way,' I am considering writing some more autobiographical stuff - maybe another book. I don't know. It doesn't help that I'm lazy.

Jim Beaver

#69. Writing a book isn't an easy process nor is it always enjoyable, but it is one of life's most satisfying achievements.

Guy Kawasaki

#70. I don't want my writing to be work to read. My main goal is completely shameless entertainment. I want people to smile and giggle and enjoy the book. I'm not trying to save the world through literature.

Gail Carriger

#71. As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.

Virginia Woolf

#72. Sometimes writing about a TV show, or a movie, or a book, is the most honest way to write about yourself.

Aaron Burch

#73. With fiction, it could be about anything. It just has to be good writing, like Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which I read recently. I want to forget I have a book in my hand.

Cheryl Strayed

#74. I haven't thought about writing so much as potentially producing and finding my own projects to get into production. I want to be able to buy the rights to a story that I have read or a book that I have read.

Mandy Moore

#75. I don't talk about my books while I'm writing them: not even my husband knows what a novel's about until it's done.

Sarah Dessen

#76. The way I challenge myself is by writing something that really engages me, that doesn't have an easy answer, and isn't always an easy book to write.

Jodi Picoult

#77. I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most.

Donald Miller

#78. I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!

Robert B. Parker

#79. Pretend you're not spending $3 to read one of my books but buying me a coffee and having a conversation about yourself.

Robin Sacredfire

#80. Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it's all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building a relationship: it is joyous, slow, fragile, frustrating, exhilarating, painstaking, exhausting, worth it.

Ben H. Winters

#81. In a longish life as a professional writer, I have heard a thousand masterpieces talked out over bars, restaurant tables and love seats. I have never seen one of them in print. Books must be written, not talked.

Morris West

#82. My word processor has spell-check capability, which lets me add words that didn't originally come in its comprehensive dictionary. It's interesting to see what words I had to add when writing this book: feedback, throughput, overshoot, self-organization, sustainability.

Donella H. Meadows

#83. I read a lot of books. Here are the books I'm using for my 9/11 project. [Wright gestures to three six-foot-long shelves of books.] As I read them I highlight certain passages. Then I have an assistant write down each quote on an index card and note where it came from.

Lawrence Wright

#84. If I was gonna write a book that was true, and I was gonna write a book that was honest, then I was gonna have to write about myself in very, very negative ways.

James Frey

#85. I'm really bad at describing my books. Journalists like to have things like "It's The Terminator Meets the Seven Dwarfs." And I can't do that with my books. If I could, I probably wouldn't write them.

Charles De Lint

#86. Writing a book, you can only get stopped by yourself.

S.J. Rozan

#87. When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook - a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.

Virginia Woolf

#88. Everybody should write a book whether you get it published or not because the experience of sort of taking it all and throwing it down on paper is unbelievably cathartic.

Gary Dell'Abate

#89. I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions And I'm giving you a longing look Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book.

Elvis Costello

#90. I should say that I'm not conscious of any particular style or any particular literary device when I am writing. I have written 22 books, and they are all very different. I have tried all kinds of genres.

Isabel Allende

#91. Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.

Sarah Dessen

#92. I once read Updike after writing a first draft, and I wanted to put my own book on the fire. I've since learned to read utter crap while I'm writing: pulp is the thing.

John Niven

#93. Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet.

Cheryl Strayed

#94. If you try to control it too much, the book is dead. You have to let it fall apart quite early on and let it start doing its own thing. And that takes nerve, not to panic that the book you were going to write is not the book you will have at the end of the day.

Anne Enright

#95. I'm not trying to please anyone. I'm just trying to write a damn book.

Richard P. Denney

#96. If he can give his readers no reason why they should read his book, except that the events happened to him, it is not a valid book.

Ayn Rand

#97. Writing a mystery is like drawing a picture and then cutting it into little pieces that you offer to your readers one piece at a time, thus allowing them the chance to put the jigsaw puzzle together by the end of the book.

Ashwin Sanghi

#98. I worked in videogames for 16 years before writing my first book in 2009.

Margaret Stohl

#99. You write a book and you finish the book. That's your job done, right? You win the Booker and you have a whole new job. You have to be the thing, right? So instead of writing the story, you somehow are the story. And that I found that sort of terrible.

Anne Enright

#100. My philosophy has always been if I can learn just one thing from an article or book on writing, it's worth it.

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