Bookish Quotes

If a writer has to rob his mother he will not hesitate; the ODE ON A GRECIAN URN is worth any number of old ladies.

- William Faulkner

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

- Jorge Luis Borges

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Every novel should have a beginning, a muddle and an end.

- Peter De Vries

In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.

- Andre Maurois

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I ever met.

- Abraham Lincoln

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.

- Russell Lynes

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.

- Thomas Berger

If I couldn't read, I couldn't live.

- Thelma Green

All books are either dreams or swords. You can cut or you can drug with words.

- Amy Lowell

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

- Dorothy Parker

Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape punishment in the hereafter.

- Jessamyn West

It's difficult to beat making your living thinking and writing about subjects that matter to you.

- Eleanor Holmes Norton

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

- Daphne Du Maurier

I wrote the story myself. It's all about a girl who lost her reputation but never missed it.

- Mae West

I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book.

- Lydia M. Child

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

- Anais Nin

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

- Mark Twain

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

- Groucho Marx

People disagreeing everywhere you look, makes you wanna stop and read a book.

- Bob Dylan