Quotes About Authorship

If you own this story you get to write the ending. If you own this story you get to write the ending.

We are the authors of our lives. We write our own daring endings.

Look how black the sky is, the writer said. I made it that way.

Get black on white.

My favorite quotes; "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector." - Ernst Hemingway. "We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master." Ernest Hemingway

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.

The forcible writer stands bodily behind his words with his experiences. He does not make books out of books, but he has been there in person.

Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am!

for as I am, in reality, the founder of a new province of writing, so I am at liberty to make what laws I please therein.

Henry Fielding's first novel was published in April 1741 under the name of Mr. Conny Keyber and sold for one shilling and sixpence. Although the author never owned to writing the short satirical novel, it is widely considered to be his work. An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews is a direct attack on the contemporary novel Pamela, published in November 1740, by Fielding's rival Samuel Richardson.

John, did Peter Owen (publisher) send you a copy of my book about books? If not I shall flay him. You were first on the list. But the English move slowly. They are all constipated, water-logged, worm-ridden, damn them!

No man is equal to his book. All the best products of his mental activity go into his book, where they come separated from the mass of inferior products with which they are mingled in his daily talk.

I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.

I proceed with the proper subject of this discourse; namely, the further changes in scientific belief, which have occurred within my own recollection, even since the time when I first aspired to authorship, now forty- five years ago.

Write a lot. And finish what you write. Don't join writer's clubs and go sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it. I set those rules up years ago, and nothing's changed.

Second novels are bears. As are other people's expectations for them. I think taking the time you need with the second book is key. Writers spend years and years on their first novels and then are often expected to turn out a second at warp speed, a recipe for failure.

I've been in grocery stores, and if they're playing my music, I'll yell, 'Hey! I wrote that!' I've been next to cars and have done that!

Writing a novel, when it's all going well, it's wonderful. You're lost in the world, and you have a relationship with your own mind. Also, as a novelist, you don't have to yell at anyone. But being an executive producer of a TV show, all you have is people coming at you with questions, and you're making decisions, decisions, decisions.

I wrote 'Yellow Submarine' for the Beatles. I wrote the screenplay for 'The Games,' about the Olympic Games. I wrote 'Love Story,' both the novel and the screenplay. I wrote 'RPM' for Stanley Kramer. Plus, I wrote two scholarly books and a 400-page translation from the Latin, and I dated June Wilkinson!

I guess I write four or five hours a day, but I do it seven days a week. It's very disciplined, yes, but it's joy for me.

And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.

I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money.' Yes, I think everybody should be paid handsomely; I insist on it, and I pay people who work for me, or with me, handsomely.

Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I'm talking to people. It doesn't always work, and one shouldn't always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.

Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.