writers quote daily

Oates on the literary runner

"Ideally, the runner who's a writer is running through the land--and cityscapes of her fiction, like a ghost ina real setting." --Joyce Carol Oates, To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet

Aciman on a writer's signature

"Don't all writers have a hidden nerve, call it a secret chamber, something irreducibly theirs, which stirs their prose and makes it tick and turn this way or that, and identifies them, like a signature, though it lurks far deeper than their style, or their voice or other telltale antics?" --Andre Aciman, A Literary Pilgrim Progresses to the Past

Vonnegut on the benefits of practicing an art

"The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow." --Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Gordon on all in a day's work

"There may be some writers who contemplate a day's work without dread, but I don't know them. Becket had, tacked to the wall beside his desk, a card on which were written the words: 'Fail. Fail again. Fail better.'" --Mary Gordon, Putting Pen to Paper, but Not Just Any Pen or Just Any Paper

Hoffman on writing fiction

"In a time when everything around me seemed completely out of control . . . I had the need to get to an ending of something. I was desperate to know how things turned out, in fiction if not in life." --Alice Hoffman

Hiaasen on fact

"Fact is routinely more fantastic than fiction." --Carl Hiaasen

Gauch on a good picture book

A good picture book is usually about some human foible. It's rooted in the humanity of some character, even if the character is a dog.! --Patricia Gauch, Editorial Director of Philomel Books

Proulx on research

"A whole set of metaphoric shovels is part of my tool collection, and for me the research that underlies the writing is the best part of the scribbling game." --Annie Proulx

Johnson on theme

"The novelist may be the last to know the theme of her work, may even have avoided thinking about it too particularly, lest, like happiness, it disappear on too close eamination or seem too thin and flimsy to live." --Diane Johnson

Smiley on novel writing

"I came to see novel writing as more like running water through a hose than putting objects into a box." --Jane Smiley