Author humor:

4,000 years later and we're back to the same language.

Introvert insight:

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

– Henry David Thoreau.

 
Don’t think of introversion as something that needs to be cured.
– Susan Cain.

I don’t have time for superficial friends.
I suppose, if you’re really lonely, you can call a superficial friend, but otherwise, what’s the point?
– Courtney Cox.

 

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
– William S. Burroughs.

Farley Mowat, on writing:

I write every day/

I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.
- Farley Mowat.

Lauren B. Davis, on writing:

 

If you are a real writer, then just surrender to the writer's life, all of it, even the bad stuff.

When you do that, the beauty appears:
the peace, the meaning, the joy, the fulfillment,
the sense that you are doing what you were born to do
and what could be better, in the end, than that?
 
- Lauren B. Davis.       

Albert Einstein, on imagination:

 

Imagination is everything.

It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
- Albert Einstein.

Kimberly Willis Holt, on writing:

Write every day.
Make writing a part of your life, but also don't be afraid of learning from others because I think you can.
I still try to think of myself as a beginner because that way I can keep on learning.
- Kimberly Willis Holt.

Harold Ross, on writing:

I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories,

and he said he wrote a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece on paper

and then went back and filled in the spaces.

- Harold Ross.

Jhumpa Lahiri, on writing:

Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.
- Jhumpa Lahiri.

Stan Lee, on writing:

 

To me, writing is fun.

It doesn't matter what you're writing, as long as you can tell a story.
 
- Stan Lee.

Anne McCaffrey, on writing:

That's what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.

_{- Anne McCaffrey}

Enrique Jardiel Poncela, on writing:

 

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.

- Enrique Jardiel Poncela.

Charles W. Eliot, on books:

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends;
they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors,
and the most patient of teachers.
– Charles W. Eliot.

Marianne Wiggins, on writing:

 

Because music is a language unto itself, when I'm writing, I need silence.

I need to hear the music and the rhythms of the words inside my thoughts.
- Marianne Wiggins.

Raymond Chandler, on writing:

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

- Raymond Chandler.

Christina Baldwin, on writing:

Writing makes a map, and there is something about a journey that begs to have its passage marked.

- Christina Baldwin.

Tom Clancy, on writing:

Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of white is filled with words.

If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world.

- Tom Clancy.

Catherine Drinker Bowen, on writing:

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

- Catherine Drinker Bowen.

Neil Gaiman, on books:

 

A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.
- Neil Gaiman.

T. S. Eliot, on literature:

 

The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.
- T. S. Eliot.

Steven Spielberg, on movies and stories:

 

The older I get, the more I look at movies as a moving miracle.
Audiences are harder to please if you're just giving them special effects ...
but they're easy to please if it's a good story.

- Steven Spielberg.