If I can’t be famous for my writing, I’ll be famous for my cake —Me, 2017
There Laura spent many happy hours, supposed to be picking fruit for jam, but for the better part of the time reading or dreaming. One corner, overhung by a Samson tree and walled in with bushes and flowers, she called her ‘green study’. ~Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford
When I am dead and in my head And all my bones are are rotten, Take this book and think of me And mind I’m not forgotten. ~Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford
No, I be-ant expectin’ nothin’, but I be so yarnin’ ~Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford
Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real? ~J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 2007
And if they’re fictional, it is entirely acceptable to cheat on fictional men with other fictional men. ~Jane Rawson, August 2009
Perhaps I’d be happier if I had a boring job like Filly, but then I wouldn’t have any time to myself. I waste so much time and then I resent it when I don’t have time to waste. ~John Harwood, The Ghostwriter
‘You aren’t stupid, Lillian,’ said Uncle Victor, smiling and shaking his head, ‘but sometimes the things you do are.’ ~Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness
I like people. I like watching them. It’s just I’d prefer to do it from a mile away using very poweful binoculars. ~Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness
The richer you are, I’ve worked out, the smaller your telephone and the bigger your telephoto lens. ~Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness
Any fool can make things complicated, it requires a genius to make things simple ~E.F. Schumacher
Wouldn’t it be weird to discover you were related to someone fictional? You’d start to doubt your own existence. ~David Mitchell, QI, 29 January 2010
Everybody at a university was to her a professor, unless they were students of course, and therefore even worse. ~Diana Wynne Jones, Enchanted Glass
Keep smiling and making jam. ~Emma Golley, circa. August 1998
A library is where you borrow books, while a book room was where you kept and read your own. ~Sir Henry Dryden, Canons Ashby c.1840
Everyone always has to have the rational, scientific explanation for something, even if it’s so obviously wrong you could scream. ~Diana Wynne Jonews, Deep Secret, 1997
Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book. ~Author Unknown
James T Kirk: Mr.Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four? Montgomery Scott: Certainly, Sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker? ~Star Trek III: The Wrath of Khan, 1984
It’s a tiny bestseller, but, officially yes. But, hey, most people haven’t read Moby-Dick, so why the hell should they read my book? ~Richard Linklater, Before Sunset, 2003
Memory is a wonderful thing if you don’t have to deal with the past. ~Richard Linklater, Before Sunset, 2003
Yeah, a memory’s never finished, if you really think about it. ~Richard Linklater, Before Sunset, 2003
He’s a writer but he can’t spell. ~Emma Shepherd
I had been working hard at my book; it was one of those rare days of authorship when everything seemed to go right; the words flowed unbidden from my pen, and the time had passed unheeded, so that it was a shock to realise that I had been writing for some six hours. ~Gavin Maxwell, Ring of Bright Water, 1960
I had a much better fantasy life, than a real life. ~Michael McIntyre, Desert Island Discs, 2011
There’s atoms, which is things that is too small to see, that’s what we’re all made of. And there’s things that are smaller than atoms, and that’s Particle Physics.’ Bod nodded and decided that Scarlett’s father was probably interested in imaginary things. ~Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book, 2008
Perhaps you think too hard about what words you’re going to use and how to make your mouth say them. ~Ali Shaw, The Girl With Glass Feet, 2009
If I knew the world was ending I’d have brought better books ~Walking Dead
They don’t know what it’s like. Inside. For them it’s only fun, even though I tell them it isn’t. You see I don’t delete. Anything. Ever. ~Alan Garner, Boneland, 2012
I’ll buy metaphor, but simile’s a cop-out used by scaredycats who won’t commit to anything. Simile’s for cowards. ~Alan Garner, Boneland, 2012
I was starting to think that except for the deli counters and five or ten thousand other total essentials, supermarkets were pretty much a waste of time. ~Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now, 2004
You’re not old, you just decided what you wanted to do earlier than I did! ~Cate Beavis, 2013
When I’m writing I can write anywhere; when I’m not writing I can’t write anywhere. ~Meg Rosoff, Oxford Literary Festival, 23 March 2013
Sometimes children must be left alone to be still and silent, and to do. ~David Almond, My Name Is Mina
You ease a record from its cover. It’s years since you’ve held one but you do this without thinking. Slide your fingers inside the sleeve, careful not to touch the vinyl. Draw it out. Hear the rustle of the paper. Balance it in the span of your palm, the outer rim on your thumb, the label on the tip of your middle finger. As it brushes your wrist, feel the soft static kiss of it. Smooth as liquorice and twice as shiny . Light spills over it like water. Breathe in the new smell. ~Rachel Joyce, The Music Shop, 2017
