Famous Quotes & Sayings

Brandon Sanderson

I am a writer who works from an outline. What I generally do when I build an outline is I find focal, important scenes, and I build them in my head and I don't write them yet, but I build towards them.

Ben Mezrich

There's always going to be controversy when you write the way I write.

Ben Okri

The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it's about us, it's about the reader.

Barbara Kingsolver

I know I have to write about the things that keep me awake at night.

Barbara Kingsolver

If you're writing, you're a writer. If you're talking about it or thinking about it, I'm not so sure. Writing is ninety-eight percent work and two percent magic.

Barbara Kingsolver

There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.

Barbara Mertz

I have no writing habit. I work when I feel like it, and I work when I have to - mostly the latter.

Augustus

We write our names in the sand: and then the waves roll in and wash them away.

Augusten Burroughs

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.

Billy Carter

I always said what I thought and I didn't hold anything back.

Bill Hicks

I've said all that I've had to say.

Theodor Reik

Nothing said to us, nothing we can learn from others, reaches us so deep as that which we find in ourselves.

Frank Robinson

I just didn't have anything to say, so I said nothing.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Thank you, Sam," he said in a cracked whisper. "How far is there to go?" I don't know," said Sam, "because I don't know where we're going.

Romy Schneider

You must not quote to me what I once said. I am wiser now.

Truman Capote

Randolph," he said, "were you ever as young as me?" And Randolph said: "I was never so old.

Sappho

What cannot be said will be wept.

Richard M. Nixon

I know you heard what you thought I said, but what I said isn't what I meant.

Barbara Pym

She had always been an unashamed reader of novels ...

Jane Smiley

Novelists never have to footnote.

Bonnie Jo Campbell

Eighty percent of all novels are bought by women, or so I've heard.

Michel Faber

All my novels are about people who strive to heal and evolve.

Amos Oz

Almost without exception, my novels are rooted in Israel because that's the place I know well.

Tom Perrotta

The lesson you have to learn as novelist is how to be collaborative, and how to say, "I don't get to dictate this."

Philip Larkin

If you tell a novelist, 'Life's not like that', he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, 'No, but I am.'

Frank Norris

The function of the novelist... is to comment upon life as he sees it.

Jessica Savitch

Being a novelty had its advantages.