Ann Patchett, on reading fiction:

Reading fiction is important.

It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own,

which in turn makes us more empathetic beings.

Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking,

and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone,

two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

- Ann Patchett.

I love to read:

I love to read.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have a life.

It doesn’t mean I’m a nerd.

I only love the feeling that ... even when you’re back in reality, you still feel like you’re in a different world.

- Author Unknown.

Mary Roberts Rinehart, on writing:

The writing career is not a romantic one.

The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.

- Mary Roberts Rinehart.

Steve Kroft, on writing:

It's not an easy process.

People think that you're a good writer, that you just sit down and do it.

It takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of time to do it and to make it good.

- Steve Kroft.

Jhumpa Lahiri, on writing:

In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak.

But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil.

- Jhumpa Lahiri.

Neil deGrass Tyson, on learning:

I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.

- Neil deGrass Tyson.

Lisa Scottoline, on reading:

I read, therefore, I matter.

- Lisa Scottoline.

Paul Auster, on writing:

Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman.

You don't choose it so much as get chosen,

and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else,

you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

- Paul Auster.

J. A. Jance, on writing:

When you have an important story to tell,

the words you need seem to come of their own accord.

- J. A. Jance.

Jim Rohn, on reading:

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.

We must not permit anything to stand between us and the book that could change our lives.

- Jim Rohn.

Ann Patchett, on writing:

The idea I pursue is the one that keeps coming back to me.

The characters I think about as I'm falling asleep at night

or when I'm driving to the grocery store

are the ones I wind up writing about.

- Ann Patchett.

Walt Whitman, on writing:

The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place.

I always worked that way.

I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…

By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.

- Walt Whitman.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, on writing:

You have the itch for writing born in you.

It's quite incurable.

What are you going to do with it?

- Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Irving Stone, on reading:

It's not macho to read?

Nonsense.

Reading is a stouthearted activity, disporting courage, keenness, stick-to-itness.

It is also, in my experience, one of the most thrilling and enduring delights of life, equal to a home run, a slam-dunk, or breaking the four-minute mile.

- Irving Stone.

Jhumpa Lahiri, on writing:

The urge to convert experience into a group of words

that are in a grammatical relation to one another

is the most basic, ongoing impulse of my life.

- Jhumpa Lahiri.

Introvert insight:

In my quiet, I was working something out.

- Keanu Reeves.

I'm constantly around people that talk a lot but say nothing.

A sad case.

- Henry Rollins.

Do you hate people?

I don't hate them ... I just feel better when they're not around.

- Charles Bukowski.

People empty me.

I have to get away to refill.

- Charles Bukowski.

Stephen King, on writing:

In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives.

- Stephen King.

Mary Roberts Rinehart, on writing:

The author lives with one foot in an everyday world

and the other feeling about anxiously for a foothold in another more precarious one.

- Mary Roberts Rinehart.

Nicholson Baker, on books:

Books:

a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

- Nicholson Baker.

Mary Higgins Clark, on writing:

A common question asked of writers is "When did you decide to become a writer?"

The answer, of course, is that we didn't decide anything.

It was decided for us.

I firmly believe that mythical godmothers make appearances at our cradles, and bestow their gifts.

The godmother who might have blessed me with a singing voice did not show up;

the goddess of dance was nowhere in sight;

the chef-to-the-angels was otherwise engaged.

Only one made the journey to my cradle, and she whispered, "You will be a storyteller."

- Mary Higgins Clark.