In books lies the soul of the whole past time.
Thomas CarlyleIf you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.
Stephen KingIt seems like when I was growing up there was more compromise, wanting to work with each other, and I think all of them – all of the lawmakers – have hearts to do what’s right, and they all are passionate about it.
Joel OsteenThe most important question in the world is, ‚Why is the child crying?‘
Alice WalkerBeauty is a short-lived tyranny.
George Bernard ShawEven in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. LewisAll right, then, I’ll go to hell.
Mark TwainIn every author let us distinguish the man from his works.
VoltaireI know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.
VoltaireThe problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.
John F. KennedyExposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.
Bill GatesWe’ve been programmed, from the time that we were very, very little, about what we can’t do – about what is impossible.
Wayne DyerI started writing as a child. But I didn’t think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something – no, maybe junior – and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.
Alice WalkerI write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn’t matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.
Wayne DyerI never thought, in my lifetime, that you’d be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.
Dolly PartonI haven’t read Horowitz. I didn’t used to read him when he was a Stalinist, and I don’t read him today.
Noam ChomskySuffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.
Franz KafkaI spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.
Ray BradburyAll my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.
Ray BradburyOne thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.
Terry PratchettI was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody.
Stephen KingThe man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
Mark TwainIf a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
Ernest HemingwayI can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.
Stephen KingI have a big following among the biogeeks of this world. Nobody ever puts them in books.
Margaret AtwoodPeople are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.
Alice MunroAll of my writing is God-given.
Ray BradburyAlmost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.
Virginia WoolfThe absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.
Albert CamusOnly kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘
Mark TwainI wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.
Anthony BourdainIn Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.
Will RogersAmerica is the greatest country in the world.
Muhammad AliOnce upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.
Margaret AtwoodI really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.
Bruno MarsLiterature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
Helen KellerIf I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.
Paul AusterI would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.
Baruch SpinozaFind enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.
George Bernard ShawI’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.
Anthony Bourdain‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.
Billie EilishI do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.
David BowieLena Waithe won an Emmy for writing while starring on the Netflix show ‚Master of None,‘ but it might be more accurate to call her a Master of Everything.
Kamala HarrisI have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.
Terry PratchettIn many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.
Alice MunroThe book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.
ConfuciusI started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.
Alice WalkerModern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.
Robert FrostThe chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
Samuel JohnsonOften one postulates that a priori, all states are equally probable. This is not true in the world as we see it. This world is not correctly described by the physics which assumes this postulate.
Richard P. FeynmanThe main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.
Dr. SeussA man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Samuel JohnsonThe present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
Blaise PascalOur generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?
Margaret AtwoodProselytism is solemn nonsense; it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.
Pope FrancisGenerally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.
Charles BukowskiA room without books is like a body without a soul.
Marcus Tullius CiceroIn the studio, we adhere to a strict colour code. Developed over decades, the colour code consists of a finite and precise colour palate… The whole world as we experience it comes to us through the mystic realm of colour.
Frank OceanVerbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.
Dan QuayleI do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘
Brian Eno