Top 100 Quotes About Books And Writing
#1. Angela Carter's fiction blew me away and really instilled a passion for writing, bolstered by Vladimir Nabokov. But in general, I can't point to any one thing. I just always loved books and writing.
Jeff VanderMeer
#2. I developed my own production company. I'm reading different books and writing, working on myself. I'm being focused on that, but also being focused on in front of the camera and balancing mommy life at the same time. I just want to continue to move forward.
Kyla Pratt
#3. If only I could manage, without annoyance to my family, to get imprisoned for 10 years, "without hard labour," and with the use of books and writing materials, it would be simply delightful!
Lewis Carroll
#4. My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#5. I just love doing radio. I've learned to be more vulnerable through radio than even I've been through books and writing lyrics. It's a different type of experience where, if I'm writing a lyric, I can sort of hide behind it a little bit.
Nikki Sixx
#6. 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
#7. I want to keep publishing books, and writing and spreading my heartsong through the world.
Mattie Stepanek
#8. Despite my solitary life, I have found infinite joy in books and writing, and am by far too much interested in the affairs of the world to quit the scene before Nature shall claim me.
H.P. Lovecraft
#9. I'm an author. And writers write books. And writing books is a full-time career.
Marianne Williamson
#10. As I inch forward to embrace my life again by being mindful, writing books, and planning adventures, I sense my dad would approve. I know he would want me to be happy.
Lisa J. Shultz
#11. Well I've been writing books. So that, by its nature, is kind of a solitary occupation. And from time to time I have research help, but mostly I've done those completely on my own.
Caroline Kennedy
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. When I read my writing, am amazed by what I have captured in a given moments.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#15. I think the kind of unexpected I really love is when you open books and the actual way of writing is different and interesting. Like reading Virginia Woolf for the first time or Lawrence Durrell for the first time.
Lalla Ward
#16. I always love writing the third book in a series because you get to tie up all the threads that you put out in the first two books. You finally let people know what really happens and reveal all the secrets and bring certain characters together.
Trudi Canavan
#17. I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
Ernest Hemingway,
#18. The most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.
Jonathan Swift
#19. I hope never to retire. I write so many because it's the thing I like to do most - to write. And if you write every day, you just naturally get a lot of books.
Eve Bunting
#20. All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other people's backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
#21. [A] finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more essential and more strange.
G.K. Chesterton
#22. To some extent, all authors are a little schizophrenic. We lead most of our lives in solitary confinement, living and breathing the books that we're writing.
Sophie Kinsella
#23. That kiss was amazing; it had all the passion and longing we had been holding onto for so long. That is when the dam finally broke for me and I started crying. I knew right then that Hunter was the only one I wanted. He was my happily ever after.
Megan Smith
#24. I'm writing all the time. I tend to work on at least two books simultaneously. I'll spend time with one, and then I'll spend time with the other. Finishing takes whatever time it takes.
Alice McDermott
#25. I caution writers all the time to slow down and pay more attention to the work in front of them than to the end result. I don't think you write one book and get anywhere. I think you write five books and then maybe you are finally on the right path.
Sue Grafton
#26. I like to do books in which a lot of the research and the writing and the thinking revolves around something American.
Bill Bryson
#27. Since when did books ever solve anything? They only raise more questions than they answer, otherwise they're just fucking entertainment, and I am not here to fucking entertain you.
Zia Haider Rahman
#28. Why does one write these books after all? The drudgery, the misery, the grind, are forgotten everytime; and one launches another, and it seems sheer joy and buoyancy.
Virginia Woolf
#29. You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?" "I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal.
Oscar Wilde
#30. For a writer it's a genuinely interesting and hopefully profitable era that makes a variety of books available to a variety of readers, extending both what's available and who gets to read it.
Sara Sheridan
#31. I do think that the kind of writing that I do will always be around and printed in books, magazines, and now blogs.
Stephen Vincent Benet
#32. Your story must told.
Live a life legacy- written book or notes.
This will be there for many generations to know your rich experiences and knowledge.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#33. I used to advise writers to just write their books and it will find a home, and suddenly that didn't seem as certain. I figured it was time to act. I considered a small press through RADAR, my literary non-profit.
Michelle Tea
#34. Thomas Mann used to write education novels and now you can write an education memoir, and there are all these memoirs coming out now about people's relationships with books. Like anything else, these can be good or bad. The genre doesn't make it good or bad, it's the execution.
Marco Roth
#35. I don't know how old I was when I started writing books. But, I was born in 1931, and I wrote my first book in 1961.
Ed Emberley
#36. He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page.
Robert Cormier
#37. I work on one book at a time. And yes, I am immersed. Six days a week for four to six hours a day. In between books, I stop writing for as much as two to three months, but during that time, I do research and think, plot and plan the book.
M.J. Rose
#38. You've got to love libraries. You've got to love books. You've got to love poetry. You've got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it.
Ray Bradbury
#39. I think that writing should be honest and simple, and it should say something about what it means to be a person. When God is good to us, we write in such a way that the act of reading becomes a pleasure to those who buy our books.
M.V. Carey
#40. To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small.
Paul Auster
#41. There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
Charles Dickens
#42. It didn't occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret. That's how one has to write anyway
in secret.
Louise Erdrich
#43. Plato was suspicious of writing which seems to remove knowledge from the present moment of the individual and lodge it elsewhere, in books, which are inert and cannot defend themselves against fools.
Iris Murdoch
#44. Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
Hermann Hesse
#45. Writers: read books. Read good books. Read bad books. Learn what does and does not work.
Kira Hawke
#46. When I'm not writing or working on books as a publisher, I'm doing things that make me happy. One is skiing with my kids and husband. I love sports.
Andrea Davis Pinkney
#47. Remember the good hours when the words are flowing well. And never mind the bad hours; there is no life without them.
Herman Wouk
#48. I mean, what can you say about how you write your books? What I mean is, first you've got to think of something, and then when you've thought of it you've got to force yourself to sit down and write it. That's all." ~ Mrs. Oliver
Agatha Christie
#49. As I read you I fell in love with the holes between your words and I loved you most on the days you could not love yourself.
Jenim Dibie
#50. Nothing mattered ... but writing books, and living the kind of life that made it possible to write them.
Willa Cather
#51. Writing is a job, a craft, and you learn it by trying to write every day and by facing the page with humility and gall. And you have to love to read books, all kinds of books, good books. You are not looking for anything in particular; you are just letting stuff seep in.
Stephen Dobyns
#52. Writing is not a numbers game. You should focus more on reaching the hearts of readers and building fans more than publishing a plethora of books that no one may care about.
Selena Haskins
#53. Ideas are not in textbooks and journals, Ideas are more deeper than the shallow written works of men. You are the idea that comes like an idea.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#54. The subject may be crude and repulsive. Its expression is artistically modulated and balanced. This is style. This is art. This is the only thing that really matters in books.
Vladimir Nabokov
#55. An undaunted author, is the one who will succeed. There is no misfortune, that can dim their optimism.
Mary Sage Nguyen
#56. The process of creation can be unpredictable and, in some way, similar to love: the brightest waves of inspiration may sometimes occur in wrong timing, wrong places, or even with wrong people.
Sahara Sanders
#57. I think that's what turns young men and women into writers - the happiness you discover living in books.
Paul Auster
#58. I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me.
Naguib Mahfouz
#59. All my books take a long time to research. I spend several months researching before I start writing, and in the middle of writing I often have to stop and look up stuff. At my local library, I am one of the best customers! The research takes several months.
Linda Sue Park
#60. Every story is a ride to some place and time other than here and now. Buried in an armchair, reclined on a couch, prostrate on your bed, or glued to your desk, you can go places and travel through time.
A.A. Patawaran
#61. I consider my greatest strength my complete and utter faith in a loving God. Strong family values are also important and I do not hesitate to write them into my books. My reader mail tells me this is something that readers especially like about my books.
Debbie Macomber
#62. My freshman English professor at Kent State University in 1984 told me I was a good writer, and she loved all the silly pictures I drew in my notebook. She said I should try writing children's books, and so I did.
Dav Pilkey
#64. I do not think that there can ever be enough books about anything; and I say that knowing that some of them are going to be about Pilates.
Sarah Vowell
#65. The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#66. But when I was a little kid, I was always writing stories and illustrating little books that I would create.
Patricia Cornwell
#67. There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran.
George Bernard Shaw
#68. I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, "Tarzan and the Lost Empire", there are 31 books on my list.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#69. A writer who has perfect writing skills and zero honesty is not an author but a sales person.
Sandra Chami Kassis
#70. While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.
Jerry B. Jenkins
#71. I believe almost every author have gone through the terribly uncomfortable period between the time of shedding the seeds of a story and waiting to see it flourish as a published book, spending hours watering and fertilizing it. This is a dreadful period, frustrating and depressing.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
#72. Writing books and being paid for it - it's not like winning the Lottery. You can't suddenly go, 'Yippee!' and start throwing tenners in the air. I've done pretty well out of it, but certainly not enough to say, 'Right, that's me set up for life.'
Joanne Harris
#73. Current "literature" [is] well-written books in which disgusting people do disgusting things to other disgusting people for no apparent reason and with no apparent resolution.
Roberta Gellis
#74. The most important thing for any aspiring writer, is to read! And not just the sort of thing you're trying to write, be that fantasy, SF, comic books, whatever. You need to read everything.
George R R Martin
#75. For a perfect holiday I need my iPhone and my writing tools. I write all my books by hand so black felt pens and yellow legal pads are a must. And my eyebrow pencil. I'm very low-maintenance.
Jackie Collins
#76. There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book. You have 200 pages to tickle their fancy, and seven words to break their heart.
Alex De Campi
#77. Writing is something that you can learn only by doing. To become a writer, you need an imagination, which you clearly have. You need to read books, which you clearly do. And you need to write, which you don't yet do, but should.
Jeff Zentner
#78. My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make changes. I have always trusted this voice.
Eudora Welty
#79. True learning happens when books and friends, writing and understanding intermingle in a rich soup of participation.
R. David Lankes
#80. I think that the practice of writing every day was what made me remember that writing doesn't have anything to do with publishing books. It can be totally separate and private - a comforting thought.
Nell Freudenberger
#81. I read my father's books growing up. I thought then and I still think now that his writing is wonderful. It delights and infuriates me in equal measure that he's still that good.
Nick Harkaway
#82. 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
#83. I write books that way - I put a first line down and say, "Where does this go?"
Carl Reiner
#84. I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier.
Mark Haddon
#85. 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
#86. The irritating question they ask us
us being writers
is: "Where do you get your ideas?"
And the answer is: Confluence. Things come together. The right ingredients and suddenly: Abracadabra!
Neil Gaiman
#87. I would rather spend money on something, that fulfills me for eternity. Rather, than something that fulfills me for only an hour or two.
Mary Sage Nguyen
#88. Correspondence, which bears much the same relation to personal intercourse that the books of dried plats I sometimes see do to the living and fresh flowers in the lanes and meadows.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#89. Writers seldom choose as friends those self-centered characters who are never in trouble, never make mistakes, and always count their change as it is handed to them.
Catherine Drinker Bowen
#90. Despite having written five books, I worry that I have not written the right kinds of books, or that perhaps I have dedicated too much of my life to writing, and have therefore neglected other aspects of my being.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#91. I had some friends commenting me books, but mostly it was people I didn't know. But they're fans. They're fans of the books, so they have a working knowledge of how I write, and they know what they like and what they don't like. I'm really grateful for their feedback.
Donald Miller
#92. I think that most writers who are trying to write important and difficult books are in many ways putting their own humanity into question. Sometimes the journey is finding out where you stand in relationship to your own humanity and to the humanity of others.
Chris Abani
#93. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. Yes, I'm a writer, but I live in this world, and my writing doesn't exist on a separate level. And if people know who I am and read my books, well, good; that way, if I have something more to say, then everyone benefits.
Jose Saramago
#94. Writing is like baking cupcakes, you're trying to make something from the raw. Like with cupcakes it's flour and eggs and stuff, and with books it's ideas and words. The end result is the same though, you want people to eat them up.
Emma Shortt
#95. Theorists write all the popular books on science: Heinz Pagels, Frank Wilczek, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, et al. And why not? They have all that spare time.
Leon M. Lederman
#96. Our house has a library - it seemed better use of the space than as a dining room! - and I try to spend as much time in there as possible. There's nothing better while reading or writing than to be surrounded by books.
Adam Christopher
#97. We never thought we were writing for posterity, because at the time everyone assumed that all the great standards had already been written by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein ... The songs we were writing were supposed to be temporary things, of the period, like comic books.
Mike Stoller
#98. One cannot be taught to write. One can only learn to write by writing - and reading. Reading good books written by real artists - until you understand why they are good.
Truman Capote
#99. You learn almost as much about a thinker from what he reads - in particular, what he likes and what he disdains - as from what he writes himself.
Rodney Ulyate
#100. This is what books only aimed to do and never could. Give you the glint of someone else's sunrise, what living is really like, you get old and it hurts to bend your elbow; your friends start to die, you can't get fresh fruit in the shops.
Geoff Ryman
