Zane Grey Quotes

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork - reading, writing, thinking - can.

But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.

I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.

I don't know what else teaches you as much as writing. Perhaps reading. So if I don't have one or the other in the course of the day, I feel old.

I tend to overwrite; I need a good editor.

I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.

I think it's good to stimulate your mind.

Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to me.

I haven't read for pleasure in 35 years. I mean, I get a lot of pleasure from what I read... For me, it's gotten so that it doesn't seem as though I've read a book unless I've written about it. It really seems the completion of the reading process.

I don't know if I officially proofread my father's book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

I can almost always read a new manuscript overnight.

The novel, as a genre, was once considered a diversion every bit as frivolous as Facebook, but over the years, we've managed to convince ourselves that reading fiction is as important to our mental digestion as fresh fruits and vegetables are to the processes that take place a little further down.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Education is unlikely ever to win an “open market” competition with entertainment because “easy” and “hard” can never compete on equal ground, and for those not yet disciplined in the rites of learning, “freedom” will always mean easy.

I work all day, morning and afternoon, just about every day. If I sit there like that for two or three years, at the end I have a book.

My office-hour reading is fairly ad hoc: I generally read whatever seems relevant to what I'm editing, writing, or thinking about writing.

There was a part of me that always wanted to be an editor.

I looked to books to stimulate my mind and create a daily sense of purpose.

I was freelance proof-reading, freelance editing, creating illustrated slides for doctors' presentations - just so I'd have enough money to take the time to write. That's how I got by.

I'm attracted to everything, and that's what keeps my mind alive always.

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate, and infinitely better looking.

One of the epiphanies I had was that I got into publishing because I love literature.

People say Wu-Tang makes you think too much. What's wrong with thinking?

I think a well-rounded education keeps us from being bored and boring!