49 quotes found
“And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very...”
“Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I w...”
“The calling of an author is more than just to entertain, but also to share ones experiences with the world.”
“The Author To Her BookThou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,Who after birth did'st by my side remain,Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,Who thee abroad exposed to publi...”
“The birth of a true poet is neither an insignificant event nor an easy delivery. Complications generally begin long before the fated soul carries its dubious light into whatever womb has been kind ...”
“When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When youre done, you have to step back and look at the forest.”
“Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, th...”
“You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This...”
“Novel-writing has in one respect an affinity to the dramathat time and distance are required to soften for use the harsher features that may be exhibited from real life; that it was almost impossib...”
“I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had ...”
“All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.”
“We do not wait for inspiration. We work because we've jolly well got to. But when all is said and done, we toil at this particular job because it's turned out to be our particular job, and in a wei...”
“He showed, in a few words, that it is not sufficient to throw together a few incidents that are to be met with in every romance, and that to dazzle the spectator the thought should be new, without ...”
“Why do you want to become an author? I will accept only one answer. If it is because you feel you can write better than you can do anything else then go ahead and do it without frills and flourishe...”
“If there's a will, there's a way!I feel larger than LIFE--and look up to the stars who shine down on me and have become my own personal cheerleaders....as my fingers tap on my computer late into th...”
“[Y]ou cannot mention everything in its proper place, you must choose, between the things not worth mentioning and those and those even less so.”
“We are living out the drama of a pathetic story whose pages are smeared with our own handwriting.”
“Turn your thoughts to novel writingnarrative, let it be about what it will, is read, because the mind quietly acquiesces, and it requires no trouble to think about it. On your part it will demand m...”
“I am not covetous, but as ambitious as ever any of my sex was, is, or can be; which makes, that though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second, yet I endeavour to be Margaret the First; ...”
“He who writes to his beloved every day, is not a lover, but a writer.”
