my favourite...quotes about writing :: ain't that the truth

'Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.'

Henry David Thoreau

 

'Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.'

William Saroyan

'I have never know any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.'

Baron de Montesquieu

 

'The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master - something that at times strangely wills and works for itself.'

Charlotte Bronte

'Wanting to know an author because you like his work is like wanting to know a duck because you like paté.'

Margaret Atwood

'Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction?  Fiction, after all, has to make sense.'

Mark Twain

 

'Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.'
Ian McEwan

'Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.'

Cicero, circa 43 BC