Bookstores Writing Quotes

Just handling this ocean of different books - new and used, in and out of print, famous and forgotten - it was literature as this giant mosaic of texts and experiments and attitudes. I think it's just very liberating to break out of a great man's theory of history.
I guess I've always liked working from that sense of - what would you call it? - license that the margins permit. I always just visualize myself writing books that were meant one day to be dusty, forgotten volumes being encountered by intrepid browsers in a used bookstore. It was a much less freighted way to think about trying to enter the conversation than to imagine I had to write The Great Gatsby. ~ Jonathan Lethem

If creative fiction writing is a process of translating an abstraction into the concrete, there are three possible grades of such writing: translating an old (known) abstraction (theme or thesis) through the medium of old fiction means (that is, characters, events or situations used before for that same purpose, that same translation) -- this is most of the popular trash; translating an old abstraction through new, original fiction means -- this is most of the good literature; creating a new, original abstraction and translating it through new, original means. This, as far as I know, is only me -- my kind of fiction writing. ~ Ayn Rand

I do write my manuscripts by hand, in pencil on legal pads. Then they are typed on a word processor by my typist. ~ Nelson DeMille

I write because it's a way of puzzling out answers to situations in the world that I don't understand. The act of writing a book gives me the same experience that I hope reading it gives readers. It forces me to sort through the various points of view on a given issue or situation and ultimately come to a conclusion. Doing that might not change my mind, but it almost always gives me a stronger sense of why my opinion is what it is - a question we rarely ask ourselves. ~ Jodi Picoult

Thoughts are ideas scattered in your head. When written forms a sentence. When rhymed, it forms a phrase and singing it blooms a beautiful poem. ~ Ymatruz

Young writers reasonably say, 'I don't know what to write about,' so writing about yourself is a very literal way to begin. ~ Susanna Moore

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

There's something peculiar about writing fiction. It requires an interesting balance between seeing the world as a child and having the wisdom of a middle-aged person. The further you get from childhood and the experience of the teenage years, the greater the danger of losing that wellspring. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything. ~ Susan Sontag

I don't think I'm essentially interested in children's books. I'm interested in writing, and in pictures. I'm interested in people and in children because they are people. ~ Margaret Wise Brown

I know I'll keep writing poems. That's the constant. I don't know about novels. They're hard. It takes so much concentrated effort. When I'm writing a novel it's pretty much all I can do. I get bored. It takes months. Movies do the same thing. It's all-encompassing. It feels like I'm going to end up writing poems, short stories and screenplays. ~ Sherman Alexie

Nothing says work efficiency like panic mode. ~ Don Roff

Basically, writers write because they have something to say...Everyone has a story in them, writers merely decide to share it with the world... ~ Virginia Alison

Just because drivers and cooks in Delhi are reading Murder Weekly, it doesn't mean that they are all about to slit their masters' necks. Of course they'd like to. Of course, a billion servants are secretly fantasizing about strangling their bosses - and that's why the government of India publishes this magazine and sells it on the streets for just four and a half rupees so that even the poor can buy it. you see, the murdered in the magazine is so mentally disturbed and sexually deranged that not one reader would want to be like him - and in the end he always gets caught by some honest, hardworking police officer (ha!), or goes mad and hangs himself by a bedsheet after writing a sentimental letter to his mother or primary school teacher, or is chased, beaten, buggered, and garroted by the brother of the woman he has done in. So if your driver is busy flicking through the pages of Murder Weekly, relax. No danger to you. Quite the contrary.

It's when your driver starts to read about Gandhi and the Buddha that it's time to wet your pants. ~ Aravind Adiga

I think the internet is a great marketing tool
but marketing is not my job. I'm a writer. My job is to write novels. ~ Bentley Little

After university, I went into film. I started out making tea, managed a brief stint as an assistant director, then found myself writing a screenplay. In the end, I wrote quite a few - but by January 2006, I wanted out. ~ Nick Harkaway

No men deserve the title of infidels so little as those to whom it has been usually applied; let any of those who renounce Christianity, write fairly down in a book all the absurdities that they believe instead of it, and they will find that it requires more faith to reject Christianity than to embrace it. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Right now I feel so inspired, it's hard to believe. I've written about 20 songs in the last two days. I'd gone about four months without writing a thing. ~ Tommy Bolin

Beware the faces that bare the most smiles.
For they are the ones who hide the most sadness - . ~ A.R. Von

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. ~ Isaac Asimov

Never use the passive voice. Do not say, 'It will get done.' Say, 'I'll do it,' and then stick to a solid, unwavering deadline ~ Gina Barreca

I'm very interested in the materiality of language. I wonder if, perhaps, this comes from my background in the visual arts. I was a potter for a number of years and earned a BFA in art before going to graduate school for creative writing. ~ Anna Journey

My songs tend to be about love. It drives some of the greatest songs. I'm looking forward to seeing what people make of my writing. ~ Birdy

I AM A PERSON WHO THINKS ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE SPIRIT WHEN I WRITE. I THINK ABOUT WHAT CAN'T BE KNOWN AND ONLY IMAGINED. I OFTEN SENSE A SPIRIT OR FORCE OR MEANING BEYOND MYSELF. I LEAVE IT OPEN AS TO WHAT THE SPIRIT IS, BUT I CONTINUE TO MAKE GUESSES. ~ Amy Tan

Whether or not he still wanted me, I knew he wouldn't want anyone else to have me. ~ Penelope Douglas

Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself. ~ Graham Swift

I could have been a cult writer if I'd kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book. ~ Haruki Murakami

When I started writing the script I thought that maybe someone else would direct it, but then I started to fall for it so much that I left the other project and I put all my time on The German Doctor. ~ Lucia Puenzo

I think it's still difficult to write about motherhood and anxiety, that talking about not wanting to be a mother or feeling ambivalent about motherhood makes people uneasy. The ambivalent mother is certainly much more interesting. ~ Laurie Foos

Whenever I'm writing a book, small details from my life always creep in. ~ Kevin Henkes

Writing is a totally different brain than directing, at least for me. With writing, you're trying your best to foresee all the problems before they happen. It's more architectural in a weird way. ~ Craig Zobel