Literature

"Readers love to be disoriented. That's part of the fun of reading." - Mark Stevens

"Why do people bother burning books if no one's reading them?" - Stephen Pastis

 "Tolstoy's children stories summon up the same feelings of delight and warmth that you find in Anna Karenina's suicide scene."  - Katherine Rundell

 "I will defend to the death any adult's right to reread trash as  often as they want, as long as they enjoy it." - Jo Walton

 "The story of Cinderella travelled the silk road just like silk or tea or the Bubonic Plague." - Kate Forsyth

"I don't need every damn novel to be written in first person present tense retro-linear haiku from the POV of the sofa pillow." - Terri Lynn Coop

"Bookstores should be ugly." - Shalom Auslander

"Celebrity memoirs should never, ever, be mistaken for nonfiction." - David Handler

"It is strange how reluctant we are to credit ancient and/or distant people with imagination enough to make up, simply make up, a story._ - Avram Davidson 

"Historical fiction is allegorical, like science fiction." Scott Kikkawa

 "It was love at first paragraph." - Megan Abbott

"What the reader wants is not always what the reader needs." -Glen Erik Hamilton 

"Story is what happened.  Plot is the order in which it's revealed to the reader." - Walter Mosley

 "Sometimes it's the wrong books that make all the difference." - Jo Walton

 "Selling only remainders is a wonderful way to learn how not to publish a book." - Denis Boyles

 "Henry James' later style gives me the impression of swimming in spinach." - John Buchan

"It takes a lot longer to read a boring short story than it takes to read an interesting novel." - James Lincoln Warren

"The way I know that I really love a book is I lose time in it." - Chantelle Aimée Osman

"I'm starting to believe the ruler of the known publishing world is called Penguin because its editors are all insane Batman villains." - Michael Mallory

"If there are stories you love, read them out loud." - Angel Colon (sp)

"Though in the higher forms at school the children were no longer beaten, the influence of such occasions was replaced and more than replaced by the effects of reading."  - Sigmund Freud

“Who are the people most opposed to escapism? Jailers!” – J.R.R. Tolkien, revised by C.S. Lewis, revised by Arthur C. Clarke

"We buy books because we think we are buying the time to read them."  - Warren Zevon

"Some short stories make the mistake of thinking a short story is just a novel, but shorter." -Sean Doolittle

'Why is some short fiction better than novels?  Because it's riskier."  -Stefan Rudnick

"'Theme' is what the critics use to describe what you did." - Eileen Gunn

"The happy ending is sadly underrated.  But it has to be earned." -Connie Willis.

"Gone With The Wind is Birth Of A Nation with less horses." - John E. Price

“It’s probably a little callous to say it, but scared people buy lots of books.” - Bill Wolfsthal.

"Adverbs are the date that wouldn't leave." -Brian Thornton

“All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they—like Columbus—didn’t discover what they expected to discover, and didn’t discover what they started out to discover, doesn’t trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.” – Mark Twain

“Each story is a Rohrshach test.” – Ray Bradbury

"'The cat sat on the mat' is not the beginning of a story, but 'the cat sat on the dog’s mat' is." - John LeCarre

“An overdose of dialect can kill your story deader than Billy Bob Shakespeare.” – John M. Floyd

"Short stories exist only to stun you." - Jeffrey Deaver

"I write short stories for the purpose of procrastination." -Craig Faustus Buck

"Nonfiction is about facts. Fiction is about truth." - Mara Purl

"The story is not the plot." -David Rich

"Good storytelling requires that you be a good listener." - Steve Steinbock

"I'm not ashamed to say I write to a formula. We don't get into a car that hasn't been designed to a formula." - Jeffrey Deaver

“I know where all the books are, it’s the furniture underneath I sometimes can’t locate.” –  Molly MacRae

“He wasn’t the suicidal type. Besides, he had books to read.” – Catherine Dilts, slightly modified

“I may be done with the book, but it’s not done with me.” -  Paul Hanson

“The plot thickens.  It’s practically coagulated.” – Aaron Elkins, slightly revised.

“In the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells." -Flannery O’Connor

“Humor must not professedly teach, it must not professedly preach; but it must do both if it would live forever. By forever, I mean thirty years.” - Mark Twain

"Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them.” – Neil Gaiman

"It’s not real because it’s real. It’s real because I made it up.” - Walter Mosley.

“If you can’t make your point in fifteen thousand words, you’re either writing a novel or you belong in politics.” -Doug Allyn

“A writer without an editor is like a criminal without a defense attorney.” -James Lincoln Warren

“There is only one plot--things are not what they seem." Jim Thompson

"A book has low carbon impact, if you don’t drive while you read.” - Carol Berry

“I can't think of a more difficult group of people to work with, than my characters. They hardly ever like each other, and don't seem to like me much either.” – John Floyd

The fact is that all stories are fantasy." - Michael Bond

“Every moral has a story.” - C.E. Lawrence

"If it's for kids, it's a fairy tale. If it's for grown-ups, it's magic realism!" -Colson Whitehead

"You can't tell a book by it's movie." Louis A Safian

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs." -Stephen King

"Writing well is the best revenge." -Sylvia Tyson

"It was not the most intelligible piece ever written, but it had words in it." -H. Allen Smith

"Even the fictional dead deserve respect ." -Rob Reuland

"A novel is a machine for generating interpretations." -Umberto Eco

"It is estimated that electronic publication will cost as much as paper publication in 1996, and will cost less thereafter." -J.W. Senders, et al. 1975.

"Beware of a man of one book." -English proverb

"Selling only remainders is a wonderful way to learn how not to publish a book." - Denis Boyles

"I don't have time to read nonfiction." -W.P. Kinsella