A Quote by Betsy Byars

For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me.

Betsy Byars

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Books Inspire Me Other Reading Reading Books Refresh Teach Them Tied Together Words Writers Writing

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Betsy Byars
American - Author
Born: August 7, 1928

I always wrote. I wrote from when I was 12. That was therapeutic for me in those days. I wrote things to get them out of feeling them, and onto paper. So writing in a way saved me, kept me company. I did the traditional thing with falling in love with words, reading books and underlining lines I liked and words I didn't know.

Carrie Fisher

I think the most reliable way to teach it is through reading work aloud over and over. Many prose writers been encouraged to do that, but that might be changing. Denise was the one who taught me to develop my ear. I never knew how to listen to writing until she started reading her work to me.

Paul Lisicky

I remember reading Dr. Seuss books, and he's rhyming so many words together and I just loved the way it sounded. It became a challenge for me, to put words together that nobody would ever think about putting together.

Tierra Whack

All my big heroes are literary, writers. I'd love to meet Jimmy Hendrix or John Coltrane, but I'd much rather meet Thomas Wolfe, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Words and books have always meant a lot to me. That someone can take words and string them together to where they will move me is just a hell of a thing. It's amazing to me; more amazing to me than music or painting. It's always been the written word or the spoken word, like a great lecture or a great lyric, or a great poem. To me it's just amazing. And I always aspire toward capturing that, or my version of it.

Henry Rollins

But, in the end, the books that surround me are the books that made me, through my reading (and misreading) of them; they fall in piles on my desk, they stack behind me on my shelves, they surprise me every time I look for one and find ten more I had forgotten about. I love their covers, their weight and their substance. And like the child I was, with the key to the world that reading gave me, it is still exciting for me to find a new book, open it at the first page and plunge in, head first, heart deep.

Ramona Koval

I think the few writers who influenced me most in writing short stories are Alice Munro and Grace Paley. They're very different, and I can't do what they do, but reading them gives me hope that I'll learn something from them.

Nell Freudenberger

There's a difference between writing, the written word, and music. When you have the blank page it doesn't make a sound, which is like what happens to me every night when I'm playing. There is that crazy moment: the first mark you make on the page. But sound can inspire sound, in a way that words can't inspire words - at least for me. The nature of sound itself is still a huge mystery to me. I'm very happy about that.

Jamie Lidell

I had a girls' writing retreat at my condo and a bunch of other female writers came down. Me and two other writers got there before everyone and they pitched this idea to me. At first I wasn't sure what direction it was going in, but then once they kind of explained to me what they were thinking, we wrote it.

Jamie Lynn Spears

My friend Danny Clinch, who's a photographer, gave me a big, signed, numbered print of a photo he took of Eddie Vedder in Seattle. It's hung in my writing room where I have posters of writers that inspire me. They're all pointing at me. Tom Waits is like, 'Don't sell out!'

Brian Fallon

Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.

Andrew Lang

My best ideas come to me at unexpected moments, like when I'm reading children's books to my kids (the pictures inspire me), shopping, driving somewhere, seeing different things.

Mary Engelbreit

Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.

Kimberly Willis Holt

The writing is really important in books that affect me. I read for the writing. The story is usually of less interest to me. It's the words that break your heart.

James Salter

Writers are voracious readers. Once I unlocked the mystery of the alphabet that led to words, a multitude of words connecting me to the world, there was no stopping me. Everything was fair game, from Louisa May Alcott to my older cousin's True Romance Magazines, from Lewis Carroll to the backs of cereal boxes. All of this fed me, but it took certain books to make me grow. I don't want to work without a sense of drama, without passion, or without both eyes open to the world around me.

Gloria Naylor

Boxing kept me out of the streets, by giving me something to do. And it gave me a father figure in the coach that was there for me. I just reiterated what my mother was trying to teach me about focusing and getting my life together.

Martin Lawrence

Dear Lord, make me a better parent. Teach me to understand my children, to listen patiently to what they have to say and to answer all their questions kindly. Keep me from interrupting them, talking back to them, and contradicting them. Make me as courteous to them as I would have them to be to me.

Gary Myers

A Quote by Betsy Byars

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