Our Favorite Quotes about Writing and Reading

When the April wind wakes the call for the soil,
I hold the plough as my only hold upon the earth, and,
as I follow through the fresh and fragrant furrow,
I am planted with every foot-step, growing,
budding, blooming into a spirit of spring.

dallas lore sharp

Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.

dorothy parker

April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

edna st. vincent millay

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

james michener

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

vladimir nabakov

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

francis bacon

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.

jules renard
journal, 10 april 1895

There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes.

william makepeace thackeray

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

charles dickens in David Copperfield

There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away
Nor any courses like a page of prancing poetry
This traverse may the poorest take without oppress of toil
How frugal is the chariot that bears the human soul!

emily dickenson

The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

ezra pound

We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.

marcus fabius quintilian

While thought exists, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

cyril connolly (The Unquiet Grave)

In the depths of winter, I finally learnt in me there was an invincible summer.

albert camus

But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having.

john perry barlow

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.

isak dinesen

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

e. b. white (Charlotte's Web)

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.

truman capote

You always find things you didn't know you were going to say, and that is the adventure of writing.

john updike

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

anna quindlen (Thinking Out Loud)

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

george bernard shaw

Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends.

s. weir mitchell

We are made whole by books, as by great space and the stars.

mary carolyn davies

You can't get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

C. S. Lewis