Writing A Book Quotes - Page 2

• A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Writing, Men

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 6 Apr. 1775)

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• Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

  Willa Cather

  Writing, Age, Fifteen

  Quoted in Rene¤ Rapin Willa Cather (1930).

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• All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Truth, Book, Reading

  Esquire, Dec. 1934

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• Writing books is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy.

  H. L. Mencken

  Success, Crazy, Book

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• I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged...I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Years, Finishing

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• The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

  Philip Roth

  Work, Writing, Sisterhood

  1979 In the NewYorkTimes Book Review,15 Jul.

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• It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Fall, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (1966). “Johnsonian miscellanies”, Constable

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• There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Education, Reading, Book

  "The Balancing Act: Mastering the Competing Demands of Leadership". Book by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler and Ron McMillan, 1996.

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• The road to hell is paved with leeks and potatoes

  Julie Powell

  Writing, Sisterhood, Skulls

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• Writing a book is an adventure.

  Winston Churchill

  Book, Writing, Adventure

  Winston Churchill (1965). “Winston Churchill, His Wit and Wisdom: Selections from His Works and Speeches”

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• An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Lying, Book, Writing

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• My favorite part of writing a book is thinking up the ideas, and that can start a long time before I actually sit down at my desk.

  Anthony Horowitz

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• Nothing mattered ... but writing books, and living the kind of life that made it possible to write them.

  Willa Cather

  Book, Writing, Kind

  Willa Cather (1954). “My Antonia”

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• My name became a brand and I'd love to say it was the plan from the start. But the only plan was to keep writing books. And I've stuck to that ever since.

  John Grisham

  Book, Writing, Names

  "A life in writing: John Grisham". Interview with Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. November 25, 2011.

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• The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.

  Patricia Highsmith

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• Do you know what writing a book is? It's sitting alone in a room for weeks without making contact with another human. I felt like Howard Hughes.

  Jon Stewart

  Book, Writing, Sitting

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• I never have written every day. When I'm writing a book, I write Monday through Friday. I always try to take Saturday and pretend to have some sanity.

  Maya Angelou

  Friday, Monday, Book

  Source: www.washingtoncitypaper.com

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• The process of writing a book is infinitely more important than the book that is completed as a result of the writing, let alone the success or failure that book may have after it is written . . . the book is merely a symbol of the writing. In writing the book, I am living. I am growing. I am tapping myself. I am changing. The process is the product.

  Theodore Isaac Rubin

  Book, Writing, Important

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• Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking. It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day to deliver your message with authority. You should write one.

  Seth Godin

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• There are no grown-ups. We suspect this when we are younger, but can confirm it only once we are the ones writing books and attending parent-teacher conferences. Everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently.

  Pamela Druckerman

  Teacher, Book, Writing

  "What You Learn in Your 40s". www.nytimes.com. February 28, 2014.

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• Whether it's films or painting or music or writing a book, the greatest experience is being able to express yourself and what you've gone through, trying to figure out a way to make it into something that's artistic that people can connect with.

  Rob Reiner

  Book, Writing, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I am through generalizing about ideas apart from men who generate them. I am through writing books about the dead, or writing books about the living to the unborn (tucked away as Literature) or writing books about the unborn to the living (whiffed away as prophecy). I put up my life on advertising the living to the living, on making men of genius known to the people and interpreted to their time, that the time in which I live, may live face to face with its men of vision and that they may live face to face with one another.

  Gerald Stanley Lee

  Book, Writing, Men

  Gerald Stanley Lee (1919). “The House of Twenty Seven Gardens”

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• If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Book, Writing, Play

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook F 1, 1799.

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• Buonaparte is certainly writing, or rather dictating, his memoirs. He walks backwards and forwards with his hands behind him, and dictates so fast that two or three of his suite are obliged to be in attendance, that the one may take down one-half of a sentence, and another the rest; they then literally compare notes, and put the disjointed legs and wings and heads of periods together. This is writing a book as he fought a battle.

  Mary Russell Mitford

  Book, Writing, Wings

  Mary Russell Mitford (1870). “The Life of Mary Russell Mitford ; Related in an Selection from Her Letters to Her Friends. Ed. by A.G. Estrange”, p.7

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• I believe that everybody needs to tell their story - to be heard, to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be understood. We all want that, deep down inside - and writing a book is a great way to make sense of your own experience and to share it with others.

  Shakti Gawain

  Believe, Book, Writing

  "Shakti Gawain Is Still ‘Living in the Light’". Interview with BJ Gallagher, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 5, 2012.

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