Siri Hustvedt Quotes

I started to read at a very early age, and I just thought that books and reading were really the most wonderful thing that life had to offer. I think I wrote my very first piece of fiction at the age of 12, but then I didn't write any more for quite a long time.

You can't write if you don't read.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

As a kid, I dreamt of becoming a writer. My most exciting pastime was reading novels; in fact, I would read anything I could find.

I want to write books.

My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.

I just want to sit in my room and write books.

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction.

My idea of a good time is creating something and reading a good book.

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.

Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.

I wanted to become a writer. I enjoyed reading as a child.

Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.

Writing books is a nice retreat. There's nothing quite like diving into a book for a few hours. That is a big time vacation.

I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday.

I've always been a reader and a writer.

I think that one of the things you have to do to become a storyteller is spend a lot of time reading stories.

I am happy to keep working on books because I'm always reading, and I'm always trying to fall in love.

I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing.

I feel like reading really defined me as a writer because I lived my life outside of my own body for so much of my life and I loved it. I've always been a reader. I think living all those stories served me to naturally take that next step to creating.

I think the reason I'm a writer is because first, I was a reader. I loved to read. I read a lot of adventure stories and mystery books, and I have wonderful memories of my mom reading picture books aloud to me. I learned that words are powerful.

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

Literature has always been the greatest fuel for my imagination.

Learned to read, and for a while as a kid, you think books are just leaves on trees. Then suddenly, you think a human being is making that, and maybe you could do that.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.