Top 100 Quotes About Writing A Good Book
#1. Reading a good book is an escape to an alternative life, writing a good book is the closest thing to actually living that life.
Chas Scott
#2. And maybe it was fair; if a book was any good, it was a slap in the face to someone.
John Irving
#3. I wasn't inspired so much by a person as by reading many good books. I loved to write and I wondered if I might be able to write material that others would enjoy reading.
Peg Kehret
#4. If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.
Katherine Paterson
#5. If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that ... hard.
Ethan Canin
#6. It's just the garbage in/garbage out trick. If you're not taking any fiction in, good or bad, then how can you be spitting any back out (good or bad)? I can't even imagine trying to write without reading. Really, I can hardly write a novel at all if I'm not reading just book after book.
Stephen Graham Jones
#7. Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.
Kimberly Willis Holt
#8. A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow.
Marguerite Young
#9. Writers are b*tc*ing about 140 characters. If you can't make a point in two sentences, how good is that book of yours really going to be?
Taken from Twitter Titters Volume 1 edited by John Rice
A.W. Tozer
#10. The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.
Anne Enright
#11. Every good book should be entertaining. A good book will be more; it must not be less. Entertainment ... is like a qualifying examination. If a fiction can't provide that, we may be excused from inquiring into its higher qualities.
C.S. Lewis
#12. Since I was trying so hard to make books lead my life, I didn't want to read them and then just put them back on the shelf and say, "good book," as if I was patting a good dog. I wanted books to change me, and I wanted to write books that would change others.
Jack Gantos
#13. People hate good books to be over. I wish I could write a 700-page book.
Steve Earle
#14. I see there is a good deal of grandiloquence in my book - my friends and foes have told me. I think it must be true, for there is a good deal of grandiloquence in me - and in nature also: I saw a sunset last evening that was a gross imposition upon modesty.
Max Ehrmann
#15. We never end up with the book we began writing. Characters twist it and turn it until they get the life that is perfect for them. A good writer won't waste their time arguing with the characters they create ... It is almost always a waste of time and people tend to stare when you do!
C.K. Webb
#16. Writing is exhilarating, but reading reviews is not. I've been really devastated by 'good' reviews because they misunderstand the project of the book. It can be strangely galvanising to get a 'bad' one.
Eleanor Catton
#17. I was just getting to the good bit when I heard the sound of his footsteps approaching and wasn't sure whether I would rather be alone with him or alone to finish my book. Men come and go. A good book lasts forever.
Chloe Thurlow
#18. How long does it take to write a good book? All of the years that you've lived.
Edward Abbey
#19. I've been very fortunate at having good titles but I just think in terms of titles. I'm doing a workshop now where people write books and they come and I name their books for them. I'm good with titles.
Larry Winget
#21. A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
Aldous Huxley
#22. Nimzovitch became then for me more or less the author of the only book which could help me get away from these Euwe books, which, I admit, are very good for the ordinary club player. But once you've reached a certain strength you get the impression that everything that Euwe writes is a lie.
Bent Larsen
#23. A real and admirable writer is the one who can write good books but can take criticisms better.
Nicholaa Spencer
#24. You can't judge a book by it's cover but you can sure sell a bunch of books if you have a good one.
Jayce O'Neal
#25. There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be traveling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.
Cyril Connolly
#26. At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.
Tracy Kidder
#27. That an author's work is the mirror of his mind is a position that has led to very false conclusions. If Satan himself were to write a book it would be in praise of virtue, because the good would purchase it for use, and the bad for ostentation.
Charles Caleb Colton
#28. The first good reason to write a book is to add value to people's lives.
Guy Kawasaki
#29. I feel like the books were just written like a movie. You read it and you can just kind of see everything. Before I went in to read with the director, I read the first book and I loved it. I didn't realize how good the writing was. And then I went in and read with Gary Ross, and that was it.
Liam Hemsworth
#30. Good omelettes are still hard to come by. They shouldn't be made in a hurried or slapdash manner. Some thought has to go into an omelette. And a little love too. It's like writing a book - done much better with some feeling!
Ruskin Bond
#31. I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing.
Anne Tyler
#32. A good book will pull you in from the beginning and take you on a journey you'll never forget.
Lauren Hammond
#33. What amazes me is that most days feel useless. I don't seem to accomplish anything-just a few pages, most of which don't seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I'm very proud.
Louis Sachar
#34. I think the hard work of writing is just how long a book is terrible before it's good."--Leigh Bardugo
Leigh Bardugo
#35. Good writing and dark wit always excite me and they come together thrillingly in this book. It has a quiet grip on the strangeness of the interior and exterior worlds of love and politics. I delighted in the writing and the scope.
Jenny Diski
#36. One of the more interesting things I've learnt since becoming a writer is that if you like the book, you'll generally like the person. It doesn't always work in reverse - there are huge numbers of lovely people out there writing not very good books.
Meg Rosoff
#37. Write the ending first and then you'll know before the opening sentence that it's going to be a good book.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#38. You enter a book as if you are setting out on a journey and, if it is a good book, you will be a different person when you reach the end.
Chloe Thurlow
#39. Sometimes I pick up a book and I say: Well, so you've written it first, have you? Good for you. O.K., then I won't have to write it.
Doris Lessing
#40. If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.
Christian Nestell Bovee
#41. I've sold too many books to get good reviews anymore. There's a lot of jealousy, because [reviewers] think they can write a good novel or a best-seller and get frustrated when they can't. I've learned to despise them.
John Grisham
#42. I'd say that about 82 percent of what I write is bad, but don't go by me; I'm as bad a judge as I am a writer. Look, if it were all good, you'd be paying twice as much for this book. So relax, read it, and if you don't enjoy it, remember that you're saving money.
George Burns
#43. I think the trick of writing a good picture book manuscript is to leave that space for illustration. An illustrated novel can do the same thing.
Mac Barnett
#44. A book is kind of like a good Horcrux, if we can imagine that
a piece of the writer's soul, preserved in a physical object for all time, and changing the lives of all those who come in contact with it.
Cheryl B. Klein
#45. Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.
Aristotle
Bruce Wayne Sullivan
#46. To a great extent, I still write for myself, write what amuses me. Fortunately, I have a quirky sort of strange sense of humor that appeals to other people and that's good. I still sort of write for myself though there are some areas of the book I feel I have to put in and I feel I have to deliver.
Jasper Fforde
#47. I have to declare in all candor that no one interested in being published in our time can afford to be so naive as to believe that a book will make it merely because it's good.
Richard Curtis
#48. She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book: It's good or it's bad. I liked it or I didn't. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad.
Gillian Flynn
#49. A good book is not the same as a successful one.
Johnny Rich
#50. Someone who does not write books, who thinks a lot, and who lives in unsatisfying society will usually be a good letter- writer.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#51. To write a good book, you must read one book for each page of the book you are about to write.
M.F. Moonzajer
#52. I had so much fun writing this book and I want readers to have fun also. A Passion for Prying is a feel-good, fun read. It's like eating a delicious, sinful hot fudge sundae--pure fun and indulgence.
Nancy Mangano
#53. It is a good thing to read books, and need not be a bad thing to write them, but in any case, it is a pious thing to collect them.
Frederick Locker-Lampson
#54. The only thing a closed book is good for is a table that wobbles. Be an open book.
A.D. Posey
#55. What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.
Katy Lederer
#56. It takes a week to write a book, but it takes years to write a good one.
M.F. Moonzajer
#57. Women can spin very well, but they cannot write a good book of cookery.
Samuel Johnson
#58. When writing a book, don't think about who is going to see it. Write about how you feel in the moment. Don't let a good idea get away.
B.A. Gabrielle
#59. Want to be a writer? take a good book a good pen and a notepad to bed with you every night of your life.
Ken Scott
#60. I never plan ahead, with the exception of the Amber books which had to proceed in sequence. But I don't really like to know what I'm going to be working on a year in advance. So I just sign blank contracts for books and whatever strikes me as a good idea is what I write about.
Roger Zelazny
#61. The best is oftentimes the enemy of the good; and many a good book has remained unwritten ... because there floated before the mind's eye the ideal of a better or a best.
Richard Chenevix Trench
#62. I haven't had a chance to pick up a good book in a long time, because I've been either reading scripts or learning them or writing them. And so, by the time the day is done, I usually just want to click on The Bachelor and fall asleep. But I gravitate toward biographies and things like that.
Justin Theroux
#63. There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. ( ... )
A good novel editor is invisible.
Terri Windling
#64. Brendan O'Meara's Six Weeks in Saratoga is a victory to be savored by those who treasure good writing in general and tales of the track in particular. Horses may win races, but they also win hearts as this impressive book proves beyond doubt. A memorable, sure-footed debut.
Madeleine Blais
#65. That's good. You see, boxing and writing are very similar. You get in the guard position, you decide to throw yourself into battle, you lift your fists, and you hurl yourself at your opponent. A book is more or less the same. A book is a battle.
Joel Dicker
#66. Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.
Alice Walker
#67. Ever since I was young, 14 or 15, I wondered if you could write a book that combined the visceral thrill of watching a movie with the total immersion you feel when you're inside a good book. And I had some success as a screenwriter before I began writing books.
Rick Yancey
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. Maybe we should all just shut up and read a good book.
Mary Sisney
#75. 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
#76. Good blurbs are short, sweet, and limited to six. They answer the question Why should I buy this book?
Guy Kawasaki
#77. You should spend more time reading the Good Book and less reading all those novels. What are you going to tell the Lord on Judgement Day when He asks you why you didn't read your bible? Hmm?
I will tell Him that His press agents could have done with a writing lesson or two, I said. To myself.
Jennifer Donnelly
#78. Nobody wanted me. I just kept writing books and learning my craft. Most writers aren't very good in the beginning.
Phyllis A. Whitney
#79. We can read a good spiritual book in search of information or in search of God. We will find only what we're looking for.
Ron Brackin
#80. Not all fiction writers are evil, just the ones good at their job. After all, it's not a decent book if it can't make you cry.
Ellie Rose McKee
#81. It's good.' She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book: It's good or it's bad. I liked it or I didn't. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad. Like a hot dog.
Gillian Flynn
#82. The characters are always the focal point of a book for me, whether I'm writing or reading. I may enjoy a book that has an intriguing mystery or a good plot, but to become one of my real favorites, it has to have great characters.
Candace Camp
#83. The most important sentence in a good book is the first one; it will contain the organic seed from which all that follows will grow.
Paul Horgan
#84. My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.
Patricia MacLachlan
#85. Improvisation, it is a mystery. You can write a book about it, but by the end no one still knows what it is. When I improvise and I'm in good form, I'm like somebody half sleeping. I even forget there are people in front of me. Great improvisers are like priests; they are thinking only of their god.
Stephane Grappelli
#86. As far as poetry, I don't know if I've ever written any. I've read a lot. I just write and it comes out in different forms and shapes. I don't know if I'm any good at it I just really go for it and I'm very prolific book wise only because I own the company. No one tells me 'no' around here.
Henry Rollins
#87. I didn't write with a target audience in mind. What excited me was how much I would enjoy writing about Harry. I never thought about writing for children - children's books chose me. I think if it is a good book anyone will read it.
J.K. Rowling
#88. May be its a good idea to write something about you in my book ... At least then, there will be a place where we will meet everyday ... and be together forever!
Anamika Mishra
#90. I once tried hawking my own book around the pubs in the hope that, like the Salvation Army, I too could sell to the cerebrally relaxed. It was a disaster. I had beer thrown over me for being a) a nuisance, b) not as good as Wordsworth and c) a nancy for writing poetry in the first place.
Peter Finch
#91. When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly.
Jen Knox
#92. I don't really have the gift of the sustained narrative that you need to write a book. I've tried a couple of times, and it just doesn't work. But I get some good passages, so what I'm going to do is just take sections out of them.
Robyn Hitchcock
#93. Mrs. Cheerson, our old teacher? She gave us an essay to write over the holiday. It was on To Kill a Mockingbird, which I read and it was good, and I think it's stupid to spoil a good book by writing an essay on it. So I didn't do it.
Jaclyn Moriarty
#94. 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
#95. Sometimes you have no idea what you are you doing, but you just do it anyways. And that can be a good thing
Anita Babic
#96. What I can tell you is DO IT. Publish book one and get book two out as soon as possible. There are very few Harper Lee's. Most of us are going to have to write a few books to get good at it.
Dan Alatorre
#97. It's all still about having a good story. You have to have a good story as your anchor, as your main focus. So for me, personally, I just like to concentrate on writing the best book I can, and if there's other stuff that goes along with it, that's awesome, as long as the story is central.
Rick Riordan
#98. It's true that we, writers, write (create) books, but eventually, a good book gives birth to a good, established writer.
Tarang Sinha
#99. In today's world, it never looks good when you're suing somebody who earned $20,000 for writing a book over a period of a year or two.
Robert Gottlieb
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
