Quotes About Authorship

Puedo preguntar a mi libro si es verdad que yo lo escribí?

Every writer is a reader first.

To have attracted readers is the most magical part of my writing life. I was not expecting you to show up when I wrote my first books. It took me by surprise. It filled me with gratitude. It still does.

A book is a really long continuous process, which ideally, should be interrupted only by sleep.

I had depressing thoughts that the theme, even though I had thought of it, was better than I was as a writer. Henry James or Thomas Mann could easily write it, but not I. 'I'm thinking of writing it from the point of view of someone at the hotel who observes her,' I said, but this did not fill me with much hope. Then my friend, who is not a writer, suggested I try it from the omniscient author's point of view.

The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.

There were some, naturally, who would understand, and he wrote for them, or for himself. Anyhow, some idealised reader who would accept everything, and forgive.

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.

La historia será amable conmigo, porque tengo intención de escribirla.

Yang bisa kita lakukan sebagai penulis hanyalah mencoba, mengerahkan usaha, menabur benih, dan menuai panen apa pun yang diberikan dengan penuh sukacita dan syukur.

Have you always used a pen?" "No," I said, "only when I want to write something worth reading.

It isn't hard being a hack writer. Between Dying Earth II and Dying Earth IX, six standard years had passed relatively painlessly. My research was meager, my plots formulaic, my characters cardboard, my prose preliterate, and my free time was my own.

Even the imperative to make choice after choice without clear guidance - allegedly the most nerve-wracking part of the profession - isn't exclusive to writing.

Nothing in this world compares to writing and being read.

You did not disturb Hemingway before noon on Monday through Friday – he was in his office, writing the books that made the lifestyle possible.

We are the authors of our own fate-we write it each day with every one of our actions.

One likes to think one grows as a writer as one ages, else all you get is an old young writer. Beyond that is the changing landscape of the universe and the stories I choose to tell.

I was getting rewarded for writing well, from about the age of five or six. A teacher would say, "Look what Andrew has written," and I thought, "Maybe I could be a writer."

I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on.

If Shakespeare had lived in our age, he would have been sued for writing Romeo And Juliet, because as everybody knows, he plagiarized that from an Italian play.

I was very happy sitting alone at a dining room table, writing a script.

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

I think writers have to be able to enjoy solitude rather than just endure it. I've always enjoyed being left alone with my imagination, ever since I was a kid.

Read The Story of O. Convince yourself that it was in fact written by a woman or someone who thinks like a woman.