A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story. Lynn Abbey
A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl. Ernest Hemingway
A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all. Annie Dillard
All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool. Steven Brust
Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent. James A.Baldwin
As a writer and as a reader, I really believe in the power of narrative to allow us ways to experience life beyond our own, ways to reflect on things that have happened to us and a chance to engage with the world in ways that transcend time and gender and all sorts of things. Kim Edwards
As a writer, I challenge myself not to tell the same story - to tackle different characters with different issues. Eric Jerome Dickey
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
By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication. Ralph Ellison
Chicago is the Great American City, and it was really great to live there during a time of economic expansion and opportunity and growth. I felt like I was living at the center of the world. Unlike New York, no one expects you to be a professional writer. John Green
Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to me like a good evocation of writer's block. Martin Amis
Don't be a writer; it's a terrible way to live your life. There's nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don't expect anything from anybody. Paul Auster
Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. Annie Dillard