Edgar Allan Poe, on inspiration and writing:

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

- Edgar Allan Poe.

Laini Taylor, on writing and reading:

I write because, as wonderful as life is - and it is truly wonderful - it isn't enough.

It does not, for example, contain dragons.

I find this unsatisfactory.

So I read.

And I write.

- Laini Taylor.

C. S. Lewis, on experience and inspiration:

Experience: that most brutal of teachers.

But you learn, my God do you learn.

- C. S. Lewis.

Anna Quindlen, on books:

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road.

They are the destination, and the journey.

They are home.

- Anna Quindlen.

Kurt Cobain, on inspiration:

Thank you for the tragedy.

I need it for my art.

- Kurt Cobain.

Anne Michaels, on books:

Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city.

- Anne Michaels.

Ben Kingsley, on writers and inspiration:

All the great writers root their characters in true human behavior.

- Ben Kingsley.

Amy Waldman, on writing:

History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction.

Most people recognize that novelists do research to get the facts right - how a glove factory works, for example, or how courtesans in imperial Japan dressed.

- Amy Waldman.

Ernest Hemingway, on writing:

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible.

There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

– Ernest Hemingway.

Geraldine Brooks, on writing:

I swim in a sea of words.

They flow around me and through me and, by a process that is not fully clear to me, some delicate hidden membrane draws forth the stuff that is the necessary condition of my life.

– Geraldine Brooks.

Stephen King, on writing:

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer.

But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

- Stephen King.

Barack Obama, on reading:

Reading is important.

If you know how to read then the whole world opens up to you.

– Barack Obama.

Theodore Roosevelt, on books:

There are rainy days in autumn and stormy days in winter

when the rocking chair in front of the fire

simply demands an accompanying book.

- Theodore Roosevelt.

Caitlin Flanagan, on writing:

If you're a writer, you just keep following the path -

keep going deeper and deeper into the things that interest you.

- Caitlin Flanagan.

John Green, on reading:

Reading forces you to be quiet in a world that no longer makes place for that.

- John Green.

Robyn Davidson, on being an introvert and a writer:

Much of the time I'm an introvert,

by choice spending a lot of time on my own.

I suppose liking my solitude is part of a writer's sensibility.

- Robyn Davidson.

Mortimer Adler, on books:

In the case of good books,

the point is not how many of them you can get through,

but rather how many can get through to you.

- Mortimer Adler.

Enid Bagnold, on writing:

Who wants to become a writer?

And why?

Because it’s the answer to everything …

It’s the streaming reason for living.

To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.

- Enid Bagnold.

Northrop Frye, on books:

The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.

- Northrop Frye.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe, on writing:

Writing is incredibly hard.

But I want to do it.

That said, I make it the top priority in every day, which for me means the first hours after getting out of bed in the morning.

I've been doing it enough years now that I don't even think about waiting for my muse to show up, I just get to work.

- Lucy Jane Bledsoe.