Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.
–Molière

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.
–Mark Twain

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.
–Isaac Asimov

Writing a novel is like driving at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
–E.L. Doctorow

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.
–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
–G.K. Chesterton

Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.
— William Faulkner

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

–Oscar Wilde

I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
–Blaise Pascal

-The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
–Thomas Jefferson