don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self-love. the libraries of the...

Close your eyes and click your heels three times... because there's no place like Dome.

Tis the old wind in the old anger, But then it threshed another wood.

She held the book in her hands, feeling a sense of awe, and lightly ran a finger over its cover as if it contained sacred writings.

Mindful of not thanking their benefactors, in case, like wights, they took offense, she added, Your kindness is gratefully acknowledged. May your trees be forever fruitful.

As Wendy watched them they burst into a chord of tinkling, girlish laughter. She felt a smile touch her own lips; not one of them could be under sixty.

I write books that I want to read. I write books that feature curvy heroines because I'm a curvy woman myself and it gets tiresome to read books about skinny women all the time. There's nothing wrong...

Some people say Earth is the bottom level of Purgatory. She pointed toward the floor and frowned. I call it the top floor of Hell.

I am halfway through Hillary Clinton's latest called "Living History"... pretty lighthearted on the scale... unlike David Hick's autobiography... I had to skip a couple of hundred pages in the middle...

Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?

What's real and what's not? People we meet in books - - Holden Caulfield, Captain Ahab, Huckleberry Finn, Harry Potter, Bilbo and Gandalf and Frodo - - can become more memorable, and more important to...

Do people ever climb the demon towers? Like, for any reason? Aline looked up. Climb the demon towers? She laughed. No, no one ever does that. It's totally illegal, for one thing, and besides, why...

Perhaps I shouldn't like it so much, but I've always been one for finding beauty in the ugliest stories.

The Bible is the greatest book ever written.

The First Book...

Just let the words fly from your lips and your pen. Give them rhythm and depth and height and silliness. Give them filth and form and noble stupidity. Words are free and all words, light and frothy,...

If we are the trees, words are our roots; and we grow as we write

O, let my books be then the eloquence and dumb presagers of my speaking breast; who plead for love, and look for recompense, more than that tongue that more hath more express'd. O, learn to read what...

I wouldn't go back to ashes or dust Words gave me life and in them I will surrender From words to words..

All words are possible, then, all names. They rain down, all these words, they disintegrate into a powdery avalanche. Belched from the volcano's mouth, they spurt into the sky, then fall again. In the...

The paper burns, but the words fly free.

Poirot, watching him, felt suddenly a doubt - - an uncomfortable twinge. Was there, here, something that he had missed? Some richness of the spirit? Sadness crept over him. Yes, he should have become...

Very early on, near the beginning of my writing life, I came to believe that I had to seize on some object outside of literature. Writing as a stylistic exercise seemed barren to me. Poetry as the art...

He did not wholly understand the intricate play of ideas and the complex phrases, but as he read he sensed a strong, whole purpose behind the words and he felt that he almost understood.

It is hieroglyphic that will last, not stone heads. The future belongs to the word, not the image. (The mason Mutsose, in Achet - Aten)

It was his wedding day, and then it was any day; it was nothing, and then it was forever.

I think of literature - she wrote - as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but cannot possibly reach. And I have started too late. I will never catch up.

Reading is an intimate act, perhaps more intimate than any other human act. I say that because of the prolonged {or intense} exposure of one mind to another.

The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through... ringing throughout the house was an alarm bell that no one but Alfred and Enid could hear directly.

An author who does not support his or her characters does not deserve the support of readers. EVER!