My Virtual Reading Room

“I want to live other lives. I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances.”
—Anne Tyler

“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
(E.L. Doctorow)

“Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.”
—Paul Rudnick

“I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.”
—Michael Cunningham

“Writing is my dharma.”
—Raja Rao

“Writing is a failure. Writing is not only useless, it's spoiled paper.”
—Padget Powell

“In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.”
—Denise Levertov

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
—Thomas Mann

“Let's face it, writing is hell.”
—William Styron

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow

“I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.”
—William Carlos Williams

“Writers end up writing stories--or rather, stories' shadows--and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough”
—Joy Williams

“Writing is…that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”
—Pico Iyer

“Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig”
—Stephen Greenblatt

“The less conscious one is of being 'a writer,' the better the writing.”
—Pico Iyer

“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.”
—Iris Murdoch

(collected from http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org)