Adeline

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.”
― Michael Cunningham