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.

Margaret Atwood, on reading:

I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.

– Margaret Atwood.

Ann Patchett, on writing:

I made a startling discovery.

Time spent writing = output of work.

Amazing.

- Ann Patchett

Henry David Thoreau, on books:

Books are the carriers of civilization.

Without books, history is silent.

- Henry David Thoreau.

Madeleine L'Engle, on writing:

You have to write the book that wants to be written.

- Madeleine L'Engle.

Lauren Oliver, on books:

But ... books are so much more.

Some of them are webs; you can feel your way along their threads, but just barely, into strange and dark corners.

Some of them are balloons bobbing up through the sky: totally self-contained, and unreachable, but beautiful to watch.

And some of them – the best ones – are doors.

– Lauren Oliver.

Jhumpa Lahiri, on writing:

It interests me to imagine characters shifting

from one situation and one location to another

for whatever the circumstances may be.

- Jhumpa Lahiri.

Veronica Roth, on writing:

I've done without doing things, like sleeping and eating, but I need to write.

- Veronica Roth.

Julia Alvarez, on writing and reading:

The elasticity of imagination and compassion is what writing and reading promote.

– Julia Alvarez.

Shannon Hale, on words:

Words can fall hard like a boulder loosed from a cliff.

Words can drift unnoticed like a weed seed on a breeze.

Words can sing.

- Shannon Hale.

Ursula K. Le Guin, on books and reading:

As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music.

And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.

– Ursula K. Le Guin.

Mabel Seeley, on imagination:

Imagination is so much harder to face than reality.

– Mabel Seeley.

Mary Higgins Clark, on writing:

The first four months of writing the book, my mental image is scratching with my hands through granite.

My other image is pushing a train up the mountain, and it's icy, and I'm in bare feet.

- Mary Higgins Clark.