A book must be an axe for the frozen sea within us

Franz Kafka

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka

There is in the short story at its most characteristic something we do not find in the novel — an intense awareness of human loneliness.

Frank O’Connor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_O%27Connor

Writing is a strange synthesis between the two parts of your mind: the analytical side and the side that knows nothing at all, and you have to allow the dreaming side free rein.

Rose Tremain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Tremain

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.

William Styron

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Styron

Don’t ask who’s influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he’s digested, and I’ve been reading all my life.

Giorgos Seferis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgos_Seferis

It’s hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Theodore Roosevelt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Mark Twain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug in the world.

Rudyard Kipling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling

The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.

John le Carré

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_le_Carr%C3%A9

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

Lorraine Hansberry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorraine_Hansberry