A while back, I posted “My 25 Favorite Quotes About Writing.” In retrospect, I probably should have titled that piece “25 Really Good Quotes About Writing.” I continuously stumble across magnificent writing quotes, and calling any one set of them “my favorite” feels limiting. It’s like choosing a favorite snowflake or ‘Rocky’ film – more just keep coming and dazzling me.
Below are another 25 great quotes from famous authors, poets and playwrights – because who doesn’t love pithy quips from crazy people? And more importantly, who has time to create a whole blog post using their own words every two weeks?
1) “Anyone who says he wants to be a writer and isn’t writing, doesn’t.” –Ernest Hemingway
2) “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” –Saul Bellow
3) “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” –Anne Frank
4) “If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.” –Isaac Asimov
5) “I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.” –Alice Walker
6) “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” –Juan Ramon Jimenez
7) “I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It’s greed, plain and simple.” –Anne Tyler
8) “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” –Samuel Beckett
9) “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” –Toni Morrison
10) “The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.” –Martin Amis
11) “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” –Gloria Steinem
12) “I don’t know why I started writing. I don’t know why anybody does it. Maybe they’re bored, or failures at something else.” –Cormac McCarthy
13) “Great writers are the saints for the godless.” –Anita Brookner
14) “One must be ruthless with one’s own writing or someone else will be.” –John Berryman
15) “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” –Anton Chekhov
16) "I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose." –P. G. Wodehouse
17) “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” –Flannery O’Connor
18) “What I want to do is make people laugh so they’ll see things seriously.” –William Zinsser
19) “I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for?” –Alice Walker
20) “Write something that’s worth fighting over. Because that’s how you change things. That’s how you create art.” –Jeff Goins
21) “Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.” –Harper Lee
22) “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us get up and go to work.” –Stephen King
23) “Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right.” –Amy Joy
24) “A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.” –Roald Dahl
25) “The pain of writing a novel is exceeded only by the agony of leaving the pages blank.” –Greg Levin (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
If you haven’t gotten your fill, you can read more great quotes on writing here. Also, feel free to share your favorite writing quote(s) in the comments section below. C’mon, all the cool kids are doing it.
It’s no secret I love dark humor. I read it. I watch it. I write it. I live it. Well, we ALL live it. I mean, what’s darker and funnier than being the only animals totally conscious of the fact they are definitely going to die one day? Hilarious.
And since we’re all definitely going to die one day, I won’t waste any more of your time on a long intro. Following are my favorite lines from my favorite authors who take their comedy black with no cream or sugar:
Chuck Palahniuk
“At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.” (Fight Club)
“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” (Fight Club)
“Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.” (Fight Club)
“I don't want to die without any scars.” (Fight Club)
“It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.” (Survivor)
“People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone.” (Survivor)
“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.” (Invisible Monsters)
“In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display.” (Rant)
“What if reality is nothing but some disease?” (Rant)
Kurt Vonnegut
“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” (Slaughterhouse-Five)
“How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.” (Slaughterhouse-Five)
“Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.” (Breakfast of Champions)
“Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead.”
(Breakfast of Champions)
"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything." (Cat's Cradle)
"All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental." (Timequake)
Bret Easton Ellis
“I'm into, oh murders and executions mostly. It depends.” (American Psycho)
“Disintegration – I'm taking it in stride.” (American Psycho)
“There’s no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I’ve started drinking my own urine.” (American Psycho)
“I don't want to care. If I care about things, it'll just be worse, it'll just be another thing to worry about.” (Less Than Zero)
“And as the elevator descends, passing the second floor, and the first floor, going even farther down, I realize that the money doesn't matter. That all that does is that I want to see the worst.” (Less Than Zero)
“I only had sex with her because I'm in love with you.” (The Rules of Attraction)
Vladimir Nabokov
“You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.” (Lolita)
“He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.” (Lolita)
“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece” (Lolita)
“All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.” (Pale Fire)
“I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.” (Pale Fire)
“Some people – and I am one of them – hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.” (Pnin)
Joseph Heller
“Be glad you're even alive. Be furious you're going to die.” (Catch-22)
“The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.” (Catch-22)
“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.” (Catch-22)
“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.” (Catch-22)
“I frequently feel I'm being taken advantage of merely because I'm asked to do the work I'm paid to do.” (Something Happened)
“I know at last what I want to be when I grow up. When I grow up I want to be a little boy.” (Something Happened)
And sorry folks, I just couldn’t resist the opportunity for a little self-promotion…
Greg Levin
"Suicide should come with a warning label: 'Do not try this alone.'" (The Exit Man)
“One week I’m helping to end a life, the next I’m stepping in to save one. Seemingly dichotomous acts, but actually one in the same.” (The Exit Man)
“She had become an integral part of my life – just not the part with all the death.” (The Exit Man)
“It’s best to discuss mass murder behind closed doors, and Jenna lived the closest.” (Sick to Death – available soon!)
“Learning he might not be dying really threw a wrench into Gage’s plans. He didn’t see how he could go on killing if there was a chance he’d go on living.” (Sick to Death)
“He never praised me whenever I’d hit a home run in little league, but I kill a few people and all of the sudden I’m his idol.” (Sick to Death)
Feel free to join in on the fun and post one or two of YOUR favorite lines from a book of dark and/or comedic fiction. Or hell, ANY kind of book. (Super-extra bonus points if it’s from one of MY books.)
A few months ago, I posted a piece titled “My 25 Favorite Quotes About Writing.” I’ve deluded myself into thinking thousands of you enjoyed that post and are now hungry for more heady, witty quotes from dead people (mostly).
This time around, however, the focus of the quotes is on reading rather than writing. I figured this would have an even broader appeal than the previous post, seeing as how almost everybody is a reader (of sorts), while – based on the spelling and grammar I see in tweets and Facebook posts – only about 0.083 percent of people are writers.
Sorry, that last line was uncalled for. But then again, so is the existence of my entire blog.
So, without further insults or hostility, here are 25 of my favorite quotes about reading:
1) “There's so much more to a book than just the reading.” –Maurice Sendak
2) “There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.” –Marcel Proust
3) “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.” –Rene Descartes
4) “He that loves reading has everything within his reach.” –William Godwin
5) “A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.” –Jerry Seinfield
6) "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." –Dr. Seuss
7) “When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” –Henny Youngman
8) “We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.” –B. F. Skinner
9) “Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” –John Locke
10) “Who I am, what I am, is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, a lifetime of stories. And there are still so many more books to read. I'm a work in progress.” –Sarah Addison Allen
11) “Never judge a book by its movie.” –J.W. Eagan
12) "A book, too, can be a star, explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe." –Madeleine L'Engle
13) "If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all." –François Fénelon
14) “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” – Mason Cooley
15) "The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one." –Oliver Goldsmith
16) "No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting." –Lady M. W. Montagu
17) “Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” –Emilie Buchwald
18) “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” –Frederick Douglass
19) “Through literacy you can begin to see the universe. Through music you can reach anybody. Between the two there is you, unstoppable.” –Grace Slick
20) “Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.” –Groucho Marx
21) “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” –Groucho Marx
22) “Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” –Mary Schmich
23) “A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.” –Samuel Johnson
24)“Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.” –P.J. O'Rourke
25) “You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” –Ray Bradbury
How about you? Yeah, you. Do you have a favorite quote (or two) about reading that you’d like to share? (Don’t worry if you can’t think of one off the top of your head; you can just google “great quotes about reading” and you’ll find a ton. That’s all I did.)