“In a world too often governed by corruption and arrogance, it can be difficult to stay true to one’s literary and philosophical principles.”— Daniel Handler, Larry Your-Waiter, Patrick Breen, imdb.com
“Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor. For me, at least, I can declare that when I wrote T…”— Chinua Achebe, amazon.com
“How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?”— Virginia Woolf, amazon.com
“You can have a very intense relationship with fictional characters because they are in your own head.”— J. K. Rowling, amazon.com
“We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.”— John Fowles, amazon.com
“No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.”— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, amazon.com
“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”— Michael Ondaatje, amazon.com
“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”— Flannery O’Connor, goodreads.com
“Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality.”— Ursula K. Le Guin, goodreads.com
“Literature is the best thing humanity has. Poetry is the heart of literature, the highest concentration of everything that is the best in the world and in man. It is the only true food for your soul.”— Lyudmila Ulitskaya, goodreads.com
“I’ve always loved books. I’m passionate about them. I think books are sexy. They are smooth and solid and contain delightful surprises. They smell good. They…can be carried around and opened at will. They don’t change. They are what they are and nothing else.”— Sue Townsend, amazon.com
“A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a tab…”— Orhan Pamuk, amazon.com
“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”— Ursula K. Le Guin, amazon.com