Here are some of my favourite booknerdy quotes that ring true for me. This is a list in progress…

Writers, said the science fiction author Isaac Asimov, fall into two groups: "Those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.’

‘When I write a novel, I’m writing about my own life…And to make it look like a novel I either have a murder or death at the end.’ Beryl Bainbridge

‘When you begin you don’t know how all encompassing a narrative will become. It’s like hearing a distant sound and thinking: ‘Well, is that actually thunder?’ and then the storm comes closer and closer and you’re caught in the middle of it before you know where you are.’ Hilary Mantel

‘There are times of boredom, there are times of regret, there are times of disappointment and there are times of it’s just hard work and times when you wonder if you’ll go on today – better not to leave it and wait til inspiration comes? Always fatal, I think.’ PD James

‘And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.’ Sylvia Plath

‘Every writer I know has trouble writing.’ Joseph Heller


‘The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.’ Agatha Christie


‘As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out.’ Mark Twain

‘An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.’  Gustave Flaubert

‘The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.’  Samuel Johnson

‘Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.’ Leo Tolstoy

‘I do not like to write - I like to have written.’ Gloria Steinem