Raymond Chandler, on writing:

The most durable thing in writing is style,

and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.

It pays off slowly,

your agent will sneer at it,

your publisher will misunderstand it,

and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.

- Raymond Chandler.

Patricia A. McKillip, on books:

 

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.

– Patricia A. McKillip.

Ray Bradbury, on imagination:

Love what you do and do what you love.

Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it.

You do what you want, what you love.

Imagination should be the center of your life.

– Ray Bradbury.

Dorothy Day, on writing:

Writing is hard work.

But if you want to become a writer you will become one.

Nothing will stop you.

- Dorothy Day.

Charles Bukowski, on writing:

When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about.

My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.

 - Charles Bukowski.

Jhumpa Lahiri, on fiction:

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

- Jhumpa Lahiri.

William E. Gladstone, on books:

Books are delightful society.

If you go into a room and find it full of books - 

even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you,
to bid you welcome.

- William E. Gladstone.

Marita Golden, on reading and writing:

The symbiotic relationship between reading and writing is a cornerstone of our individual intellectual journey, and our educational system.

We write as an act of self-expression.

We read because language renders unto us the vitality of real and imagined experience.

- Marita Golden.

H. P. Lovecraft, on writing:

At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour.

No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.

- H. P. Lovecraft.

Margaret Atwood, on writing:

 

A word after a word is power.

- Margaret Atwood.

Barack Obama, on writing:

Writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are.

The process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions.

- Barack Obama.

Maya Angelou, on writing:

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

- Maya Angelou.

Albert Einstein, on intelligence and imagination:

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

- Albert Einstein.

Tatiana de Rosnay, on stories:

When a story is told, it is not forgotten.

It becomes something else, a memory of who we were; the hope of what we can become.

– Sarah’s Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay.

Ernest Hemingway, on writing:

 

I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

- Ernest Hemingway.

Isabel Allende, on writing:

Write what should not be forgotten.

- Isabel Allende.

Lloyd Alexander, on reading:

Keep reading. It's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.

- Lloyd Alexander.

Caroline Gordon, on books and reading:

 

A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way. 

– Caroline Gordon.

Dr. Seuss, on books:

 

Fill your house with stacks of books,

in all the crannies and all the nooks.

- Dr. Seuss.

Sylvia Plath, on being a writer and an introvert:

 

We stayed at home to write,

to consolidate our outstretched selves.
 
- Sylvia Plath.