Quotes About Authorship

Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest.

Virginia Woolf was wrong. You do not need a room of your own to write.

When I was a 12-year-old middle-schooler in Richmond, Virginia, my local newspaper published an op-ed that I wrote all by myself.

I've written virtually as long as I've acted, it wasn't a sudden transition. I acted in my first play when I was 16 and I wrote my first play when I was 17.

I think that every enduring story that has expressions over multiple periods, that role of being the keeper of the integrity of the vision is a very important role.

I knew what book we had to write, it was clear in my head; it was journals and poetry. So I passed on their offer. I told my agent this is our vision, and no one's done it this way.

Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. 'Read,' she'd say, 'and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out, 'I can do that too!

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

God's eternal decree certainly rendered the entrance of sin into the world certain, but this may not be interpreted so as to make God the cause of sin in the sense of being its responsible author.

Hurrah! My story was accepted; and Lowell asked if it was not a translation from the German, it was so unlike most tales. I felt much set up, and my fifty dollars will be very happy money.

Well, I'm going to be a writer. And when I say that's a mountain, that's a mountain.

My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line.

come le figure dipinte non parlano quando le interroghi, così le parole scritte non sanno rispondere che sempre nello stesso modo, quello scelto dall'autore quando ha scritto il libro».

Every writer is the amanuensis to their characters

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

One must be ruthless with one's own writing or someone else will be.

Do you enjoy being a writer, Mrs Avery?" asked Julian. "No, of course not, she said. "It's a hideous profession. Entered into by narcissists who think their pathetic little imaginations will be of interest to people they've never met.

If you want your life to be a magnificent story, then realize that you are its author. Every day you have the chance to write a new page in that story. I want to encourage you to fill those pages with responsibility to others and yourself. If you do, in the end you will not be disappointed.

I write books to influence people I will never meet. Books increase my audience and my message.

One not only writes a book. One lives it. Upon completing it there are certain symptoms of death.

Sorry this is such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write a shorter one.

Writers will happen in the best of families

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.