quotes

On writing, reading, remembering…

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

—  Steven Wright

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.

—  Benjamin Franklin

Gloria Swanson in a production still from the 1920 film “Why Change Your Wife.”

I’ve given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can’t divorce a book.

—  Gloria Swanson

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

—  E.L. Doctorow

Writing’s still the most difficult job I’ve ever had – but it’s worth it.

—  John Grisham

Writing a book is not as tough as it is to haul thirty-five people around the country and sweat like a horse five nights a week.

—  Bette Midler

Ernest Hemingway at Sun Valley, Idaho, 1939.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

—  Ernest Hemingway

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

—  J.K. Rowling

I love all insider memoirs. It doesn’t matter whether it’s truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialized job they have.

—  David Mamet

I always wrote. I wrote from when I was 12. That was therapeutic for me in those days. I wrote things to get them out of feeling them, and onto paper. So writing in a way saved me, kept me company. I did the traditional thing with falling in love with words, reading books and underlining lines I liked and words I didn’t know.

—  Carrie Fisher