Brené Brown, on art and creativity:

 

If we want to make meaning, we need to make art.

Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing – it doesn't matter.
As long as we're creating, we're cultivating meaning.
- Brené Brown.

Betsy Byars, on writing:

 

Writing is like anything – baseball playing, piano playing, sewing, hammering nails.

The more you work on it, the better you get.
But it seems to take a longer time to get better at writing than hammering nails.
- Betsy Byars.

Katherine Paterson, on reading:

 

Reading has made such a profound difference to my life.

I'm sure I became a writer because of the power of literature in my own life.
- Katherine Paterson.

Julia Alvarez, on writing:

 

A book does not discriminate against any reader.

All are welcome at the table of literature.
– Julia Alvarez.

Ann Patchett, on writing:

It was all in my head and now all I had to do was figure out a way to get it down on paper.
- Ann Patchett.

Anne Rice, on writing:

If you want to be a writer, write.
Write and write and write.
If you stop, start again.
Save everything that you write.
If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again.
Write.
Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less.
- Anne Rice.

Iris Murdoch, on reading and writing:

Reading and writing and the preservation of language and its forms and the kind of eloquence and the kind of beauty which the language is capable of is terribly important to the human beings because this is connected to thought.

 – Iris Murdoch.

Shannon Hale, on writing:

Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

- Shannon Hale.

Iris Murdoch, on literature:

 

The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature,
since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.
– Iris Murdoch.

Toni Morrison, on life & art:

Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.
- Toni Morrison.

Jackie Kennedy, on books and reading:

 

Love of books is the best of all.

– Jackie Kennedy.

Jean Craighead George, on reading:

 

I love to travel, but when I really want to escape, I read a book.

- Jean Craighead George.

Mary McGrory, on writing:

 

If there is a secret to writing, I haven't found it yet.

All I know is you need to sit down, clear your mind, and hang in there.
- Mary McGrory.

Ann Patchett, on writing nonfiction:

 

When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.
- Ann Patchett.

Alex Flinn, on inspiration and writing:

 

Any experience that isn't fun is probably something I will at least use in my writing someday.

- Alex Flinn.

Patricia Wentworth, on writing:

There is and always has been for me a peculiar need to write.

This is very different from wanting to be a writer.

To be a writer always seemed something so far removed from my talents and abilities and imaginings that it didn't afflict me at all as a notion when I was young.

But I was always conscious that I wanted to write.

- Patricia Wentworth. 

Betsy Byars, on writing:

 

When I type a title page,

I hold it and I look at it and I think,
I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I’ll have a book.
- Betsy Byars.

Nancy Kress, on writing:

You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.

- Nancy Kress. 

Mildred D. Taylor, on writing:

I do not know how old I was when the daydreams became more than that,

and I decided to write them down,

but by the time I entered high school,

I was confident that I would one day be a writer.

- Mildred D. Taylor.

Ann Patchett, on reading:

 

Reading is a private act, private even from the person who wrote the book.

Once the novel is out there, the author is beside the point.
The reader and the book have their own relationship now,
and should be left alone to work things out for themselves.
- Ann Patchett.