Author Index: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

John Cheever Quote: 'I can't write without a reader. ...'

Related Quotes

I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction.
Paul Theroux
I get intrigued by a first lin and I write to find out why it means something to me. You make discoveries just the way the reader does, so you're simultaneously the writer and the reader.
E. L. Doctorow
Tags: You Me Just
sun pond water nature lake
Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it.


Bernard Meltzer
dolomites mountains italy alpine
The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.


Sara Zarr
Tags: Me Write Trying
But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.
Hilary Mantel
Tags: Ever Also Without
I would say if you want to write, write what you care about. I think that's the most important thing. I think if you write what you care about, you stand a better chance of having the reader care about your story.
Jerry Spinelli
Tags: Chance You About
I have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life with your imagination, then what you write ought to have lasting value, no matter what the mood of your prose.
Paul Theroux
Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
Susan Sontag
Tags: Alone Been Every
Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.
Raymond Chandler
Tags: You Like Love
Corbin Bleu was my first kiss in life. I was 12, and he was, like, my first kiss for TV... It was on the lips!
Keke Palmer
Tags: Like Life He
I like to write about the solitary things people do. Humans seem to function best when they're alone.
Thomas McGuane
Tags: Best Alone People
trees branches sunset sky clouds
Boys always like to see girls kiss. I don't get it; girls don't want to see boys kiss.


Dominique Swain
Tags: Like Get Always
Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself. I always failed. I would freeze up.
Joan Didion
Tags: Up Always Than
I've never worried about 'the reader' because there isn't one. There are thousands, and they all have strong opinions, from 'Magician' was the best ever,' and I've gone downhill since to 'The new book is the best ever,' so to whom to I listen? So I write for myself and hope other people like it.
Raymond E. Feist
Tags: Best Hope People
I do believe that models should be older now. You tell girls to go and catwalk and be sexy, but some of these girls have never even experienced their first kiss, so they don't understand how to be like that.
Shanina Shaik
Tags: You Like Never
No one ever became, or can become truly eloquent without being a reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language.
Fisher Ames
I think 'accessible' just means that the reader can walk into the poem without difficulty. The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry.
Billy Collins
I notice that students, particularly for gay students, it's too easy to write about my last trick or something. It's not very interesting to the reader.
Thom Gunn
dolomites mountains italy
The Jew does not wish to be isolated. He fears being alone, without allies.


Meir Kahane
Tags: Alone Being He
I'm not precisely saying that a really good board meeting at the MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Coucil) makes me want to go and write poetry, but there is a pleasure in doing that sort of thing well.
Andrew Motion
Tags: Good Poetry Me