Famous Quotes & Sayings

Anne Fadiman

The problem with the literary hothouse of New York City is that people spend so much time looking in the mirror. They go to parties with people who are just like them, and they write novels about people who are just like them. It's limiting.

Tawni O'Dell

I write literary, not commercial, fiction - or so I've been told by my publishers who are proud I write literary fiction but secretly wish I wrote commercial.

Ellen Potter

I resisted children's writing for a long time. I saw myself as a writer of literary fiction. But I had so much more fun writing kids' books.

Jeffrey Eugenides

One of the reasons I like Barthes more than other writers of that ilk is because he had a literary quality.

Andrea Hirata

I think what matters most in literary work is the context, not the text.

Paul Theroux

Japan, Germany, and India seem to me to have serious writers, readers, and book buyers, but the Netherlands has struck me as the most robust literary culture in the world.

Ian Mcewan

Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition.

Horace Engdahl

I think he is unassailable from a literary point of view, ... On the other hand, there may be some people who think he's too established.

Siri Hustvedt

It's not as if I've been unlucky. My books have been published and reviewed. I haven't lived through terrible literary suffering!

Colin Murray

We say she resisted and that is why she died.

Carol Leifer

There were very few women comics when I started out doing stand-up. But I always saw that as a great advantage.

Charlie Crist

I was a Republican, and I saw the activists and what they were doing; it was intolerable to me.

Orlando Cabrera

When I did that I said 'Wow,' ... I got the video, and when Tejada saw the play when he got out, he started clapping.

Brian Wilson

I met Paul in 1967, Ringo in 1985, and I saw George Harrison in a nightclub somewhere in L. A. I never met John.

David Sedaris

If you stepped out of the shower and saw a leprechaun standing at the base of your toilet, would you scream, or would you innately understand that he meant you no harm?

Gabrielle Zevin

My grandparents used to bring me books every time they saw me.

Jandy Nelson

In one split second I saw everything I could be, everything I want to be. And all that I'm not.

Roman Gutierrez

We still saw some of our inexperience today. That will be the case, but there were still some steps of improvement.

Brian May

I really thought I was pretty good before I saw Hendrix, and then I thought: Yeah, not so good.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.

Charles W. Chesnutt

There's time enough, but none to spare.

Charles de Lint

In the dark attics of our minds, all times mingle.

Charles Dickens

A boy's story is the best that is ever told.

Charles Caleb Colton

Tomorrow! It is a period nowhere to be found in all the registers of time, unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar.

Charles Caleb Colton

Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.

Charles Caleb Colton

Time ... advances like the slowest tide, but retreats like the swiftest torrent.

Charles Caleb Colton

Time,- that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities.

John Dos Passos

If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.

Jean Paul

Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.

Aminatta Forna

Most writers I know go for word counts, and I used to be a journalist, so I guess that's ingrained.

Claire Tomalin

Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films.

Arthur Bryant

Say what you have to say in the fewest possible words.

Robert Klein

In some articles written about me, writers have said I'm a link between the old and the new, and I think, in a certain sense, that's legitimate.

Scott Adsit

'Monty Python' and 'The Simpsons' have ruined comedy for writers for the rest of our lives.

Brian Keene

Everything can be grist for the muse. Sometimes, writers draw on personal experiences. 'Ghoul' was just that.

John Irving

I sometimes think that what I do as a writer is make a kind of colouring book, where all the lines are there, and then you put in the colour.