"A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre."

— Samuel Johnson

“I am influenced by words and the chewiness of language”

― Annie Proulx

"A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not."

— Roald Dahl

"You have to become a different person to write the next book. The person you are already wrote the last book."

— Jonathan Franzen

"“What doesn't kill us makes us funnier.”

— Marian Keyes

“I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.”

— Steve Martin

"Write in recollection and amazement for yourself."

— Jack Kerouac

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."

— Herman Melville

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos."

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

— Ernest Hemingway