A writer's ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years' time and for one reader in a hundred years' time.
‐‐ Arthur Koestler
A writer's definitive death is when no one reads his books anymore. That's the final death.
‐‐ Jose Saramago
A writer's job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.
‐‐ Barry Hannah
A writer's job is to give the reader a larger vision of the world.
‐‐ Natalie Goldberg
A writer's job is to tell the truth.
‐‐ Andy Rooney
A writer's life suits me. It's fairly, well, other people might think it was actually rather dull, but that's fine because I feel that my imagination is enough to kind of keep me happy.
‐‐ Ronald Frame
A writer's main tool is his memory - his own memory, the collective memory of his people. And the strongest memory is the one that is created by a wound to the heart.
‐‐ Anatoly Rybakov
A writer's obligation is to invent: to go beyond what did happen and to look at what could have happened but didn't. Fiction writers are born liars.
‐‐ Tim O'Brien
A writer's work is to witness things.
‐‐ Edward Hoagland
A writer's work often reflects what he or she has been exposed to in life; experiences which are the groundwork of a poem or a story.
‐‐ Eyvind Johnson
A writer should bury his thoughts deep and convey them through the characters in his novel.
‐‐ Mo Yan
A writer should express criticism and indignation at the dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature, but we should not use one uniform expression.
‐‐ Mo Yan
A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.
‐‐ Gwendolyn Brooks
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
‐‐ Vladimir Nabokov
A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here.
‐‐ Quentin Tarantino
A writer should never mark the page with their own tears.
‐‐ Richard Flanagan
A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
‐‐ Gertrude Stein
A writer starts out, I think, wanting to be a transfiguring agent, and ends up usually just making contact, contact with other human beings. This, unsurprisingly, is not enough.
‐‐ Joy Williams
A writer stops writing the moment he or she puts the last full stop to their text, and at that point the book is in limbo and doesn't come to life until the reader picks it up and the reader flips the pages.
‐‐ Alberto Manguel
A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch.
‐‐ Michael Ondaatje
A writer wants something more than money for his work: he wants permanence.
‐‐ A. A. Milne
A writer who is in a hurry to be understood today or tomorrow runs the danger of being misunderstood the day after tomorrow.
‐‐ Johann Georg Hamann
A writer who presents men and women as creatures truncated below the waist is exposed as one who goes about without his trousers saying, 'see, I have had my testicles removed.'
‐‐ Norman Lindsay
A writer without a reader doesn't exist.
‐‐ Harlan Coben
A writer without his country is nothing.
‐‐ Marek Hlasko
A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.
‐‐ Regina Brett
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.
‐‐ Leo Rosten
A writer writes. Period. No matter if someone is buying your work or not.
‐‐ Len Wein
A written constitution guides and directs the application of law in a way utterly unlike oral guidance. It reminds us that the certainty and consistency of legal application is essential.
‐‐ Edwin Meese
A wrong concept misleads the understanding; a wrong deed degrades the whole man, and may eventually demolish the structure of the human ego.
‐‐ Muhammad Iqbal
A yacht is not for me. I don't enjoy it.
‐‐ Shari Arison
A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service: The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible.
‐‐ Frederick W. Smith
A yawn is a silent shout.
‐‐ Gilbert K. Chesterton
A year after winning the Oscar, almost to the day, I was directing a dog food commercial.
‐‐ Peter Capaldi
A year ago I had a back injury and followed a good nutrition program to help speed up my recovery. I focused on exercise and staying healthy in order to get back out on the ice.
‐‐ Sasha Cohen
A year ago I was in the city of Genoa, and I found that it returned seven representatives to the Sardinian Parliament at Turin, seven being its fair share, calculated according to the population of the various cities and districts of the Sardinian kingdom.
‐‐ John Bright
A year from now, you're gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.
‐‐ Phil McGraw
A year is a long time to live without the human contact of loved ones, fresh air, and gravity, to name a few.
‐‐ Scott Kelly
A year is an eternity in politics - though less than a moment in history.
‐‐ Eliot Spitzer
A year or so ago I went through all the people in my life and asked myself: does this person inspire me, genuinely love me and support me unconditionally? I wanted nothing but positive influences in my life.
‐‐ Mena Suvari
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
‐‐ Alan Perlis
A young actor once asked me, What do you do between jobs? I said, Hobbies, hobbies, and more hobbies.
‐‐ Robert Duvall
A young and vital child knows no limit to his own will, and it is the only reality to him. It is not that he wants at the outset to fight other wills, but that they simply do not exist for him. Like the artist, he goes forth to the work of creation, gloriously alone.
‐‐ Jane Harrison
A young artist can become popular more quickly with the Internet providing instant access to one's work.
‐‐ Jillian Mayer
A young ballplayer looks on his first spring training trip as a stage struck young woman regards the theater.
‐‐ Christy Mathewson
A young bride can put on makeup at 6 in the morning and look fabulous at midnight. I have about a 15-minute window where I actually look good, and then I have to wash my face and start over.
‐‐ Cathy Guisewite
A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.
‐‐ Honore de Balzac
A young Brit girl with no theatre experience decided to take on an iconic American role on Broadway. Maybe I should have thought that through?
‐‐ Emilia Clarke
A young dog's faith is absolute... Dogs are notorious for hope. Dogs believe that this morning, this very morning, may begin a day of fascination, easily grander than any day in the past.
‐‐ Donald McCaig
A young fella snuck out on to the field somehow, but when he was coming up to give me a hug, he got smoked by the guard. He was lucky the guy didn't break his ribs.
‐‐ Sonny Bill Williams