Quotes About Authorship

The career of a writer is comparable to that of a woman of easy virtue. You write first for pleasure, later for the pleasure of others and finally for money.

As soon as I finish a book, I sell the paperback rights to different publishers and that's where I recoup my money.

It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money.

He[ Italo Calvino] always said it would be impossible to try to make films out of his books, though he hoped it would happen because that's where the money was.

Authorship has never been with me a matter of choice. I have not done it for amusement, or for money, or for fame, or for any reason but because I could not help it.

We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money.

As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.

If you want to write a book that's very successful and famous, then it's hard. If you just want to get published, all you have to do is convince an editor that your idea will make them money.

I don't spend money on books. I write them myself.

Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you'll end up with less of either.

Throughout my early career, I would write from five to ten in the morning every day before going to my office, a habit that has stayed with me since.

The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning

I still get up every morning at 4 A.M. I write seven days a week, including Christmas. And I still face a blank page every morning, and my characters don't really care how many books I've sold.

I write seven days a week, starting at 4 o'clock in the morning, including Christmas.

I never would start writing before midnight and I would finish at, like, seven in the morning.

When I write a novel I start each morning by reading for 20 minutes.

I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.

I never saw any of my dad's stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.

You are your own scriptwriter and the play is never finished, no matter what your age or position in life.

One of the best things about directing movies, as opposed to merely writing them, is that there's no confusion about who's to blame: You are.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. "So you're the honky," she said, "who stole my song and got a hit out of it?

I never listen to music when I write.

Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.