Writer Quotes

A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.

~ Anthony Trollope

Just about the worst thing an artist can do is to try and be a nice person.

~ Amanda Craig

... and it was quite a sad thing,the way I watched you sleep like nothing could go wrong and I did not want to harm it, I did not want to blur it, but how could I notwhen everything I’ve ever known has slowly gone awayand I know by now that that’s the way you let the new day in with new roads and views and chances to growbut it was quite a sad thing because I don’t want this to ever become ’then’ or ’was’ and it was quite an unfamiliar thing. The way I took off my shoes again, put down my bag and quietly went back to bed, slowly between the sheets of moments I don’t want to leaveand it was quite a beautiful thing the way you had no idea but still must have known because you did not even open your eyes, but turned around and took my hand and you were still asleep, breathing in and out like nothing could go wrong, but still held my hand like you were glad I didn’t leave. ’Thank you for staying’and it was quite a wonderful thing, the way I smiled and so did you, sound asleep, and that’s all I need to know for now. That’s all I want to know for now.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

We knew she [Sylvia] was unusual, because of the seriousness with which she was treated, the lofty importance of her job as guest managing editor, and because she was kept fast at her desk when the rest of us were allowed to fool around….I remember we discussed how the editors treater her differently from the rest of us, as if she had been pre-recognized as someone they were expecting great things of.

~ Elizabeth Winder

To receive the compliments of being a good writer really annoys me, as this has been my perception that a writer as such has no value, it is the readers who invest their thought process, give life to dead words, coupled with their own imagination, thus syncing the content to their tastes and sensibilities, that matter.

~ Ramana Pemmaraju

I am smiling a big adopted-orphan smile as I write this ... I still love scribbling the word - WRITER - any time on a form, questionnaire, document asks for my occupation. Fine, I write personality quizzes, I don't write about the Great Issues of the Day, but I think it's fair to say I am a writer ... ('Adopted-orphan smile', I mean, that's not bad, come on.)

~ Gillian Flynn

My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue [is] the pen of a ready writer.

~ Anonymous

A writer must find his own grain, way, bent. ...He aspires to create new and original works. His way is alone. If he succumbs to ideologies, he turns into a mouthpiece. He must hang on to his identity for dear life. In the end he must rely on his own judgment. It’s the only way to survive as a writer and an artist.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Who thought up the dumb idea to arrange the memoir section in the bookstore by subject?

~ Slash Coleman

Life's too short, drive it like ya stole it!

~ Debra L. Hartmann

Every great writer is a great reader.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

As a character I am dead, as a writer I am not.

~ Deyth Banger

A writer's duty is to draw a picture that expresses more inner beauty, deeper anxiety, and more complex tragedy than a real character ever can.

~ Debasish Mridha

He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; he must make his whole world in a single, coherent gesture, as a potter makes a pot...

~ John Gardner

Realize that by hurting your own characters, you are not a sadist. You are not deliberately hurting your loved ones merely to watch them suffer. You’re giving a gift. You’re helping them grow and develop. Your characters take on deeper meaning to become more alive on your pages. They’ll become real.

~ James Chartrand

You'll never be able to silence the woman who was born to write.

~ Melody Lee

Was it an insult to be called a “woman writer”? Didn’t it have a taint of, say, the “woman driver”?

~ Mary Norris

Being a writer brings out a sassy woman inside me, and I love her so.

~ Anna Bayes

Why do I write?To be somewhere elseTo get free of ourselvesTo stopTo stop being anything or anywhere at allTo disappear

~ Rainbow Rowell

If a book is not alive in the writer's mind, it is as dead as year-old horse-shit

~ Stephen King

If you've never experienced something and don't know how to write about it, then make it a fantasy book. It gives you a lot of freedom.

~ B.a. Gabrielle

Could a writer understand how her book had saved someone long ago, when the world was a fragile, scary place and the people she loved weren't in it anymore? Could a writer understand that her book had mattered more than anything?

~ Ann Hood

I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart’s blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.

~ W. Somerset Maugham

Don't judge a book by its cover. Judge it by its publisher.

~ Ljupka Cvetanova

Some relationships are like glass its better to leave them broken than to hurt yourself trying to put the pieces back together again. When you start reading the Bunna Man, most of my readers hate Dre and then they realize that Dre doesn't really have any power. The only power he has is the one Saf gave him. What happens now is that by you reach the middle of the story, your anger turns from Dre to Saf cause you realize that Saf is the catalyst behind her own misery. If she'd leave Dre alone. Her suffering would end

~ Crystal Evans

Lost in a book is a great place to be found.

~ Shannon Taylor Hodnett

The name of a great writer is usually bigger than the title of his book. Both literally and figuratively.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There are two motives for writing a book: one, that you may save what you know, the other, that you may share what you know with the public.

~ Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Those who are coming from the gutters know that from time to time a piece of us will break off and float back to the floor from whence it came. Wealth can gray your eyes at the edges, money does not make you hover above human qualities, you are only a flawed being with much material gain.

~ Crystal Evans

On Twitter, people who had read my book followed me and I could see what else they were reading, why they'd liked what I'd written and by the by, more about them than I'd ever elicit from two minutes in a tent at a book festival, stuck behind a signing desk.

~ Sara Sheridan

I like to skip prewriting. I love just jumping into the actual writing process. Then I revise/edit and fix what I need to. Then the following steps; proofread and publish. Of course before you just go into writing, it would be a good idea to do some charts of each chapter...what you would want each one to be about and have a character list with their personalities and how they will come into play in your book. I mean, you wouldn't just want to go all crazy and jot down all kinds of random stuff at once...trust me, you'll go crazy. With writing, you take it as it comes, go with your own flow.-Nina Jean Slack

~ Nina Jean Slack

If you don't write, then read.

~ Sylvia L'namira

A real and admirable writer is the one who can write good books but can take criticisms better.

~ Nicholaa Spencer

It's a nice feeling, Knowing, Someone lived easier Because I was alive.

~ Nikki Rowe

I hide away in my room to seeJust what stories will come to me.

~ P.b. Mcilrath

Rain's pouring and it's too cold. All people bored and I even accord What to do but spell a tale told: So once upon a time a land in the shore...

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

I'm not just a reader or a writer; I inhale written words like they're my oxygen. It's not a hobby. It's a passion. People intrigue me. Life intrigues me. I see a story behind every pair of eyes I meet, history in every voice. I'll see someone wearing a smile and wonder what put it there. Words allow me to immerse myself in a whole other world. I get to become a different person.

~ Nicola Haken

You have to be careful what you write and not allow self righteousness to cloud your ability to be objective. This story is not about you, it's about people and things that no one else sees. The truth will at times come to you in a blur, unclear, unsettling refusing to leave until you figure out its relevance.

~ Crystal Evans

Be true to the writer within you; tell the story you're dying to tell in exactly the way you wish to tell it, and don't trust anyone who tries to sway you otherwise.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

A daydreamer is a writer just waiting for pen and paper.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich