Quotes on Book Writing

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties.

Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.