'I don't believe in it (writer's block). All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?'
Philip Pullman

'Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.'

G K Chesterton

'Nobel Prize money is a lifebelt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety.'

George Bernard Shaw (attrib)

'What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.'

A S Byatt

'Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.'

Cicero, circa 43 BC