Quotes About Authorship

A friend of mine who is working on a memoir says, I hate the idea of writing as some kind of catharsis, because it seems like that can't possibly produce a good book. You cannot hope to console yourself for your grief by writing, warns Natalia Ginzburg. Turn then to Isak Dinesen, who believed that you could make any sorrow bearable by putting it into a story or telling a story about it.

When I ask him why he thinks I should have known that he was writing about himself, he looks puzzled and says, Who else would I be writing about?

I told Ron to take my name off the paper," recalls Adleman. "I told him that it was his invention, not mine. But Ron refused and we got into a discussion about it.

La scrittura esige virtù scoraggianti, sforzi, pazienza; è un'attività solitaria in cui il pubblico esiste solo come speranza.

Ja, wenn ich Ihre Energie hätte...' Mit Energie hat das gar nichts zu tun, dachte ich beim Aussteigen. Ich könnte einfach nicht leben, ohne zu Schreiben.

If you want to be a writer, learn to type.

It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.' Stein on Writing

Every writer knows that when you're imitating somebody - you know, you're sounding like Faulkner - you're doing pretty good, but your life in Hoboken isn't Faulkneresque.

I don't feel I owe my readers details of my family's private life.

Manga endings might always be the same. However when it comes to real life, neither you nor I are readers. We are the writers. We can change the ending.

If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.- Toni Morrison

Ever since I could read, I've wanted to write a book. I never thought I had anything to write about. Maybe you don't think this is worth writing about. But this book isn't for you. It's for me.

Confession: I don't want to be one of my characters. I'm mean to them sometimes. Really mean.

Indie publishing lets me feed my inner control freak.

Writing is the spectrum through which the chaos of life can be seen, studied and understood.

Be the author of your destiny.

To lead and live the life of your dream, you must arise and be in-charge of the authorship of your own destiny.

It's easy to write a sentence, paragraph, or book. What's difficult is writing the best sentence, paragraph, or book, you can write.

The greatest thing about writing is that you get to shape more than one life.

As a writer, I'm always at the mercy of my inspiration, my intuition, and my imagination.

There is a brilliant novel in all of us. Some imagine it…others live it. Authors dwell in an auspicious life by having the ability to fuse the two.

I've] never written a thing without a record on.

Hamlet could not possibly have been written by Hamlet.

It's at this point—the purchase—as you may know, that the problem begins. The book is excellent, yes, but the author and the cuisine remain on one side of the page and I on the other. All I get are the recipes. And what I've found—and it's been a painfully long time learning—is that recipes without the author, without the cuisine to which they were once a living, seamless part, die. Or, rather, become no more and no less than any other recipe.