Quotes About Authorship

I always thought it would be so much fun to write a book.

Raymond Roussel] said that after his first book he expected that the next morning there would be a kind of aura around his person and that everyone in the street would be able to see that he had written a book. This is the obscure desire harboured by everyone who writes. It is true that the first text one writes is neither written for others, nor because one is what one is: one writes to become other than what one is. One tries to modify one's way of being through the act of writing.

As soon as you start writing, even if it is under your real name, you start to function as somebody slightly different, as a writer. You establish from yourself to yourself continuities and a level of coherence which is not quite the same as your real life... All this ends up constituting a kind of neo-identity which is not identical to your identity as a citizen or your social identity, Besides you know this very well, since you want to protect your private life.

Si vous saviez, lorsque vous commencez à écrire un livre, ce que vous allez dire à la fin, croyez-vous que vous auriez le courage de l'écrire?

As a result, we must entirely reverse the traditional idea of the author. We are accustomed, as we have seen earlier, to saying that the author is the genial creator of a work in which he deposits, with infinite wealth and generosity, an inexhaustible world of significations. We are used to thinking that the author is so different from all other men, and so transcendent with regard to all languages that, as soon as he speaks, meaning begins to proliferate, to proliferate indefinitely.

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.

The heartbreak of having written and published a first book is that the world then expected you to write a second.

Writing was the antijob, the fuck you to all jobs, her claim on her autonomy, what kept her feral and free.

Humans are storytellers. It is our nature to make up stories, to interpret everything we perceive. Without awareness, we give our personal power to the story and the story writes itself. With awareness, we recover the control of our story. We see we are the authors and if we don't like our story, we change it.

If you want to write, then write. If you want someone to give you MONEY for what you write, you must understand that you are in a BUSINESS relationship. Learn the BUSINESS of writing.

The only answer a truly dedicated writer has to "What are your best books (or stories)?" is "My second best is the one I'm writing now, and my best is the one I'll be writing next.

Na lito??, przecie? to zaczyna by? Å›mieszne, koniec koÅ"ców! - nie poddawaÅ' siÄ™ Korowiow. - Pisarz jest pisarzem, poniewa? pisze, a bynajmniej nie dlatego, ?e ma legitymacjÄ™.

A writer isn't a writer because he has a membership card but because he writes. How do you know what bright ideas may not be swarming in my head?

Your membership cards, please, said the woman. This is really all rather funny! said Koroviev, refusing to give up. A writer isn't a writer because he has a membership card but because he writes. How do you know what bright ideas may not be swarming in my head? Or in his head? And he pointed at Behemoth's head. The cat removed its cap to give the woman a better look at its head. Stand back, please, she said, irritated.

But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?

Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors.

What does it mean, anyway, to 'retract' what you've said? How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid? In modern times a thought can be refuted , yes, but not retracted . (p. 179)

One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived.

A woman writer, except in rare instances, has no protection such as enjoyed by men who use their wives and mistresses as a marline to save themselves from the wear and tear of interruption.

There's as much great authorship in the filmmaker community as in the literary community, and I'd love to welcome more filmmakers into the fold.

It's just as well that I write in the same facile way wherever I am - no blocks or anguish, no contemplation, no elaborate revision, no need for love-tokens or nice views.

I've been writing stories since I was a kid. I love writing stories.

I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.