Some quotes about writing

In the same way that a woman becomes a prostitute. First I did it to please myself, then I did it to please my friends, and finally I did it for money.

Ferenc Molnar ... after asked about how he became a writer

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to those who are not yet born.
Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, English Essayist

Books are the quietest and most constant friends, they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors and the most patient of teachers.
Charles W Elliot, 1834-1926, American Educator

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Ursula LeGuin, b 1929, American sci fi writer

All that mankind has done, thought or been is lying in magic preserved in the pages of books.
Thomas Carlyle, 1785-1881, Scottish Essayist, Historian and Philosopher

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.
George Simenon, 1903-89, Belgian novelist

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yoghurt.
Calvin Yrillin.