Quotes About Authorship

I would quit while you're ahead. Really, it's an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it's not any good. I would say just stop now. You don't want to do this to yourself. That's my advice to you.

The motive for writing serious literature is to write serious literature. You want to rebel against society? I'll tell you how to do it - write well .

Hebrews: No one knows who wrote Hebrews, but it probably first went to Christians in danger of slipping back into their old, rule-bound religion. It interprets the Old Testament, explaining many Jewish practices as symbols that prepared the way for Christ.

For the plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins.

The clearest argument against Plato's authorship is probably that Plato never wrote a work whose interpretation was as simple and straightforward as that of Alcibiades.

In the age of Plato there was no regular mode of publication, and an author would have the less scruple in altering or adding to a work which was known only to a few of his friends.

As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.

You are wise enough to understand that being "a little lonely" is not a bad thing. A writer's occupation is one of the loneliest in the world, even if the loneliness is only an inner solitude and isolation, for that he must have at times if he is to be truly creative. And so I believe only the person who knows and is not afraid of loneliness should aspire to be a writer. But there are also rewards that are rich and peculiarly satisfying.

We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it, As though we had written it.

You think fairy tales are only for girls? Here's a hint—ask yourself who wrote them.

Strand, Mark [Blah blah blah biographical information, crossed out with Sharpie pen.] We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it, As though we had written it.

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.

We are fictioneers.

If you have to pay the bills, and you write something you're not proud of, use a pen-name for that.

Toda vida es una novela. La escribimos a medida que la vivimos.

The writer that you are, I guess you're used to being a kind of dictator, telling the characters in your stories what to do.

His first work, Orchids in Winter, was the initial selection of a TV talk-show host's

His third never made the list, sold fifteen thousand copies, and was savaged by critics.

But I remember talking with Mr. Garrick once in London, and his reference to the playwright as a little god who directs the actions of his creations, exerting absolute control upon them. Mrs. Cowley argued with this, saying that it is delusion to assume that the creator controls his creations and that an attempt to exert such control while ignoring the true nature of those creations is doomed to failure.

When I decided that I should have a female character, I simply introduced her, knowing nothing about her other than the fact that she was an Englishwoman. ... Whereupon Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp promptly took over the story and began telling it herself. Being in no position to argue with her, I took the path of least resistance, and went along to see what would happen next.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

I didn't like being a name attached to a book.

I was always attracted and repelled by the idea of being a writer.

'Some day,' I said, 'I will be an author.'