Quotes About Authorship

I'll call for pen and ink and write my mind

Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant.

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field

De vreugde van het schrijven. De macht van vereeuwiging. De wraak van een sterfelijke hand.

It is true that a writer writes first to please himself and that his own satisfaction with what he has done is perhaps his greatest satisfaction. But writing is a means of communication. It is not enough to speak; you must also be heard. The message must be received and understood.

If you haven't the creative urge, or if it is fulfilled elsehow, then, although you may be a skilled craftsman, writing the most delightful letters to your friends, the most lucid reports to your superiors, you will never produce a poem or a play or a story. You may make a journalist but you will never make an author.

I have always suffered from the feeling that it's better to read a good book than to write a poor one; and I've done so much mixed reading in my time that my mind is full of echoes and voices of better men. But this book I'm worrying about now really deserves to be written, I think, for it has a message of its own.

A good idea is a good idea and my work should compete on its own merits, not based on the size of my fan base.

That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.

Every time I write something, I think, this is the most offensive thing I will ever write. But no. I always surprise myself.

once, if you told people you were self-published, they'd look at you like you were a smelly old jobless hobo just come off a dusty boxcar with soupcan shoes and a hat made from a coyote skull.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.

Your book, ' The Tyranny of God ,' is well done. It is a very clear statement of the question, bold and true beyond dispute. I am glad that you wrote it. It is as plain as the multiplication table, which doesn't mean that everyone will believe it. I thank you for writing it. I wish I were the author. { Preface to 'The Tyranny of God by Joseph Lewis }

E nasci para escrever. A palavra é o meu domínio sobre o mundo.

Eu queria escrever um livro. Mas onde estão as palavras? esgotaram-se os significados.

Este libro requirió una libertad tan grande que tuve miedo de darla. Está por encima de mí. Intenté escribirlo humildemente. Yo soy más fuerte que yo. C. L.

I am not mad out of solidarity with the thousands of us who, in order to construct the possible, also sacrificed the truth which would be a madness.

I don't have the feeling that I write my books. I have the feeling that my books get written through me and once they have got across me I feel empty and nothing is left.

It's not quite as valuable as if it had been written in 1929, when Martin Luther King was born.

Unless you must write a book, you mustn't.

We prefer to think that the absence of inverted commas guarantees the originality of a thought, whereas it may be merely that the utterer has forgotten its source.

Bizarrely, I am convinced that a writer incapable of talking about himself is not a complete writer. —WITOLD GOMBROWICZ,

Veertien Dertien had men net zo goed kunnen overslaan, omdat er alleen maar onzin in staat. Ik heb helemaal geen zoon, laat staan dat hij een rondleiding over mij zou presenteren in zaal Concordia. Eigenlijk had men één tot en met twaalf net zo goed kunnen overslaan omdat immers alles onzin is. Ik kan het weten, ik schrijf al die bullshit.