What women writers are expected to do…quotes for writers (and people who like quotes)
It is well known that a woman can be in two places at once, at her desk and her washing machine… Sylvia Townsend Warner photo credit: Socks via photopin (license)
There are a lot of myths about writing, says Sci Fi writer David Brin – ignore them all. Quotes for Writers (and for people who like quotes)
The romance surrounding the writing profession carries several myths: that one must suffer in order to be creative; that one must be cantankerous and objectionable in order to be bright; … Continue reading
Terry Pratchett on books and writing Quotes for Writers ( and people who like quotes)
Too many people want to have written. Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one. The space between the young readers eyeballs and the printed page is a holy … Continue reading
We are lonesome animals – John Steinbeck on why writers write: Quotes for writers (and people who like quotes)
A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of … Continue reading
“There are only four kinds of readers…” Quotes for Writers (and people who like quotes)
There are only four kinds of readers. The first is like the hour-glass; their reading being as the sand, it runs in and it runs out, and leaves no vestige … Continue reading
Roddy Doyle on why writers need to be flexible – Quotes for Writers (and people who like quotes)
Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called The Partitions. Then I decided to call them … Continue reading
Why poetry is essential – Audre Lorde Quotes for Writers (and people who like quotes)
Poetry forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action … Continue reading
The difference between a lie and a story…Quotes for Writers (and people who like quotes)
A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward. A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn’t … Continue reading
A bitter lesson for writers – Thomas Wolfe Quotes for Writers (and people who like quotes)
What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece … Continue reading
Hilary Mantel on the dangers of writing historical fiction — Quotes for Writers (and people who like quotes)
A relation of past events brings you up against events and mentalities that, should you choose to describe them, would bring you to the borders of what your readers could … Continue reading
Doris Lessing on the art of reading well — Quotes for Writers (and people who like quotes)
“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, … Continue reading
Margaret Atwood on the problems of knowing what’s going to happen next… Quotes for Writers (and people who like quotes)
You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. … Continue reading
Terry Pratchett on old women and misleading covers — quotes for writers (and people who like quotes)
I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers… this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted. Terry Pratchett photo credit: donielle via … Continue reading
…The supreme expression of story is the novel…Richard Flanagan, winner of 2014 Booker. Quotes for Writers (and people who like quotes)
I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that … Continue reading
BRIDGET WHELAN writer 