“Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.” –Katherine Paterson

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.” – Richard Wright

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” – Saul Bellow

“To be a writer is to sit down at one’s desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone – just plain going at it, in pain and delight.” – John Hersey

“To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations.” – Aldous Huxley