"Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me."
— Isabel Allende (The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir)

"The view, though. The view. It is undeniably exhilarating."
— Anita Shreve

"Little Tamar, forget the long ago. We are here and we are now, and that is all. We are making a new start.""
— Doris Lessing (Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog: A Novel)

"If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead."
— Lori Lansens (The Girls)

"'Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth.'"
— Lori Lansens (The Girls)

"There ain't no time for foolishness now. You in it now. You got to stay in it."
— James McBride (Song Yet Sung)

"If she had been left alone she would have gone on, in her own way, enjoying herself thoroughly, until people found one day that she had turned imperceptibly into one of those women who have become old without ever having been middle aged: a little withered, a little acid, hard as nails, sentimentally kindhearted, and addicted to religion or small dogs."
— Doris Lessing (The Grass Is Singing)

"I thought: this is how life is, ridiculous beyond comprehension."
— Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams)

"In my opinion, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from a greaty height."
— Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams)

"Don't let the bastards grind you down."
— Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale)

"Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted."
— Margaret Atwood (Dancing Girls)

"Love is an action you must repeat ceaselessly."
— Andrew Davidson (The Gargoyle)

"Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth."
— Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin: A Novel)

"If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you."
— Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within)

"The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough."
— Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin: A Novel)

"Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure."
— Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within)

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

"Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream"
— Jack Kerouac

"Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters."
— Neil Gaiman

"So what? All writers are lunatics!"
— Cornelia Funke (Inkspell)

"Something having been done just about everywhere just about always is no kind of justification for doing it now."
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Eating Animals)