Writing Quotes

I hoped that it would be possible to slide slowly from my public life back to the life of teaching and writing that I had always wanted. But things didn't work out that way.

Charles Van Doren
- Life
- Work
- Writing
All writing is that structure of revelation. There's something you want to find out. If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.

Walter Mosley
- Up
- Want
- Beginning

When I was writing 'The Satanic Verses,' if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn't have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn't seem to be a big deal.

Salman Rushdie
- Deal
- Islam
- Radical
I started writing poems, and when I first tried prose, I wrote bad articles and essays and columns, and I didn't have a handle on it. I didn't go to a school that really taught you how to write that stuff.

Eileen Myles
- Writing
- School
- Bad
My writing process hasn't changed - it's is the same whether I'm working on a Y.A. novel or, as now, a new novel for adults. A lot of reading, a lot of research if the subject warrants it, a lot of sticky notes and scraps of paper - and get to work.

Kathe Koja
- Work
- Writing
- Reading
With reporting, if you work hard, you can usually pull something out. But writing humor doesn't respond to working hard, necessarily. I mean, you could just sit there and look at the page all day and maybe something will come.

Ian Frazier
- Work
- Day
- Humor
I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.

Karen Thompson Walker
I realized after writing songs for years how important it is. Whether it provides a living for me or not, that creative outlet is something I need.

Sam Hunt