Top 100 Quotes About Writing A Book
#1. Mary Daheim writes with wit, wisdom, and a big heart. I love her books.
Carolyn Hart
#2. Emily wondered whether Artie would be so carefree if he knew The Book Club was performing grand theft imagination.
S.A. Tawks
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. Good blurbs are short, sweet, and limited to six. They answer the question Why should I buy this book?
Guy Kawasaki
#7. It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#8. When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose.
Samuel Colbran
#9. 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
#10. I worked at magazines for over 10 years before I even thought of writing a book.
Dave Eggers
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. There is a heavy price to pay for writing a bad book.
Tony Burgess
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. Read a short story every day. By the end of the week you would have read volumes of stories.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. If you would be remembered, write a book worth the reading or live a life worth the writing about.
Benjamin Franklin
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. A book acts as the getaway car when you need to escape.
Even when you're the one writing it.
Julie Wright
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. Sometimes writing about a TV show, or a movie, or a book, is the most honest way to write about yourself.
Aaron Burch
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. Writing a book, you can only get stopped by yourself.
S.J. Rozan
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.
Sarah Dessen
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. I'm not trying to please anyone. I'm just trying to write a damn book.
Richard P. Denney
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. I don't sit down with a goal of writing. I read books or magazines. I watch TV. I go to the doctor. I get on airplanes. I live a normal life and sometimes I'll notice something or read things or experience things.
Brian Regan
#61. Dave Eggers is a prince among men when it comes to writing deeply felt, socially conscious books that meld reportage with fiction. While A Hologram for the King is fiction ... it's a strike against the current state of global economic injustice.
Elissa Schappell
#62. When I write a book I'm always questioning the project as a whole. I always feel I might have to just throw it away and forget about it, and I've done that with novels I've started and worked on for a long time. It's an option I need in order to write freely.
Daniel Kehlmann
#63. I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.
Rob Machado
#64. A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
Mark Twain
#65. Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head.
Alice Hoffman
#66. 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
#67. Maybe we should all just shut up and read a good book.
Mary Sisney
#68. With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made.
Emma Donoghue
#69. Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.
Damon Galgut
#70. I write titles that are confrontational. I write titles that make people want to pick up a book and find out more about it. I write good books; I write great titles though.
Larry Winget
#71. My last book was speculative. I just don't quite know what I am doing. But I'll get there. I have a list of things I would love to write.
Jami Attenberg
#72. I always dread the process of writing because I'm not a writer. I'm an audible guy, I'm a verbal guy. I love to talk. I write a book every couple years, but it just takes everything out of me to get a book out.
T.C. Boyle
#73. I'm writing a book about Siamese Twins that are attached at the nose. It's called: Stop Staring at Me!
Zach Galifianakis
#74. I am writing a book. So far I have the pages numbered.
Steven Wright
#75. When people climb a mountain, they don't stay there. They come back down and tell everyone they climbed a mountain. Writing a book is like that. If you write a book, you should tell everyone.
Bob Howard
#77. One of my book-reading friends used the term "our story unfolds" when describing a paper he was writing. He became somewhat less of a friend right at that moment.
Tommy Greenwald
#78. If a book isn't self-explanatory, then it isn't worth reading.
Paulo Coelho
#79. At first the boys were puzzled by illness. They looked at their father from the other side of a wall of pain, bewildered that their father stood writing in his book, when he had only to reach over the division and lift them clear of it.
Diane Setterfield
#80. Writing, acting, music, comedy. A deep love of literature and books. Thank God for all the artists who've helped me.
Bill Hicks
#81. 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
#82. I hear you don't write any more," he says ...
"Not true," I inform him. "You should see the margins of my student papers."
"Not the same as writing a book though, right?"
"Almost identical," I assure him. "Both go largely unread.
Richard Russo
#83. No one can tell you what you can and cannot put in your book. So be brave and just write!
Chrys Fey
#84. I've started working on a new album, I'm writing a new book ... there are a lot of good things on the horizon.
Ace Frehley
#85. It takes a long time to write a book. I'm not going to spend that much time trying to deliver a message. The reason I do it is because I want to understand something myself. It's not a delivery device, it's an inquiry device. Didactic fiction to my mind never works. It backfires.
Ruth Ozeki
#86. Since 1988, I have been writing steadily. I did decide a couple of years or so ago to scale back to writing one book a year - a sort of semi-retirement. But I never did have much success with that plan!
Mary Balogh
#87. 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
#88. For such a long time, when you're a writer, you really are just writing for yourself, and maybe a few friends. So it's really amazing when your book gets out there and more people are reading and responding to it. It really makes the world of the books feel real.
Cassandra Clare
#89. I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That's 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book - something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.
Stephen King
#90. I am writing a book entitled "Conquest." Please be ready. It is a book children should red.
Charles Keith Hardman
#91. If you are writing children's books, you need to be a ruthless killer.
J.K. Rowling
#92. Ask yourself, what makes my book so different? So interesting? Don't write to be a best seller. Write for and from your heart, not your wallet. Write something you want to be remembered by.
Leon Nacson
#93. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
Herman Melville
#94. We should all live as though someone is writing a book about us.
J.R. Rim
#95. I think I wrote 'The Trysting Place' in about three weeks. But it was inexperience that made me have to do that. I didn't feel good about the book all the time I was writing it. It felt a bit like wading through molasses.
Mary Balogh
#96. Maybe you could be a great writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write that English paper - that English class paper that's assigned to you.
Barack Obama
#97. It's entirely possible to base an entire book on a long-forgotten letter.
Sara Sheridan
#98. Richard Price, who has made a fortune writing fake ghetto books, says he takes a cab into the ghetto, transcribes Black speech for a brief time and returns home. His fake ghetto books have bought him a townhouse in Gramercy Park and home on Staten Island.
Ishmael Reed
#99. There is a big difference between wanting to say you wrote a book, and actually writing one. Many people think they want to write, even though they find crafting sentences and paragraphs unpleasant. They hope there is a way to write without writing. I can tell you with certainty there isn't one.
Scott Berkun
#100. 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
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