Francoise Sagan

"I had read a lot of stories. It seemed to me impossible not to want to write one. Instead of leaving for Chile with a band of gangsters, one stays in Paris and writes a novel. That seems to me the great adventure." Francoise Sagan

Truman Capote

"I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis." Truman Capote

Andrew Bird

"I create little challenges for myself, like, 'Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,' or something like that." Andrew Bird

Vikram Seth

“I sometimes seem to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.” Vikram Seth

Roald Dahl

"The line between roaring with laughter and crying because it’s a disaster is a very, very fine line." Roald Dahl

Peter Carey

"I went to work in 1962, and by '64 I was writing all the time, every night and every weekend. It didn't occur to me that, having read nothing and knowing nothing, I was in no position to write a book." Peter Carey

Tom Waits

"I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary." Tom Waits

Jeffrey Eugenides

"I tell my students that when you write, you should pretend you’re writing the best letter you ever wrote to the smartest friend you have. ...I think about the reader. I care about the reader. That one person, alone in a room, whose time I'm asking for." Jeffrey Eugenides

Raymond Carver

"I have to believe in miracles and the possibility of resurrection. No question about that.
Every day that I wake up, I'm glad to wake up." Raymond Carver 

J D Salinger





"I seldom care to know a writer's birthplace, his children's names, his working schedule, the date of his arrest for smuggling guns (the gallant rogue!) during the Irish Rebellion. The writer who tells you these things is also very likely to have his picture taken wearing an open-collared shirt-and he's sure to be looking three-quarter-profile and tragic. He can also be counted on to refer to his wife as a swell gal or a grand person." J D Salinger

Aldous Huxley

"It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels." Aldous Huxley

Richard Ford

"I'm enough of a Presbyterian to know that it ain't the destination - it's all in the trip there. I like the part of being a writer in which you don't feel the sides of anything. You don't see the beginning, and you don't see the end, you're just in it." Richard Ford.

Maurice Sendak

"I have to accept my role. I will never kill myself like Vincent Van Gogh. Nor will I paint beautiful water lilies like Monet. I can't do that. I'm in the idiot role of being a kiddie book person." Maurice Sendak

Ira Glass



"It's hard to make something that's interesting. It's really, really hard. It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre." Ira Glass

Karen Russell

"One of the humbling things about growing up in South Florida was that now nothing I can come up with in a story holds a candle to the true weirdness of that place... Miami Seaquarium, the Coral Castle, Shark River Valley, Parrot Jungle, Monkey Jungle." Karen Russell

Ali Smith

"Stories can change lives if we're not careful. They will come in and take the shirts off our backs. Tell the right stories and we live better lives." Ali Smith

Jarvis Cocker

"I do tend to write about things more than I actually do them. Which is probably good news for womankind." Jarvis Cocker

Vincent Kartheiser

"I was a nut for Dostoevsky." Vincent Kartheiser

Haruki Murakami

"Some people write me letters, complaining that they laugh when they read my books on the train. It’s very embarrassing for them. Those are the letters I like most." Haruki Murakami

David Vann

"We shouldn’t apologise for writing about our families, we shouldn’t apologise for writing tragedy, we shouldn’t apologise for having obsessions or writing about the same material a couple times... It’s part of what writing actually does and is; writing transforms things and it redeems things and so those tend to be ugly things and that’s why we all write tragedy." David Vann