Quotes About Authorship

I'd say that about 82 percent of what I write is bad, but don't go by me; I'm as bad a judge as I am a writer. Look, if it were all good, you'd be paying twice as much for this book.

When you're on a staff, it's not your job to write what you think is funny. It's your job to write what the person who created the show thinks is funny.

There's nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, "Well, okay, I'm going to do something of high artistic worth." It's funny.

Writing this book required an enormous amount of help from friends. To them goes the credit. I'll take the money.

As for jokes, I don't think it's necessarily that what I write is funny.

A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.

The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.

I picture several reviewers of my own books as passing a long future lodged between Brutus and Judas in the jaws of Satan.

Sometimes you have intuitive insight about how you think things are going to be, and you write that. Other times you fantasize completely, which has nothing to do with predicting the future.

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

I'm a better writer now because I've worked very hard at getting better. My long-range goal will always be to write better books.

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

I write for Reader's Digest. It's not hard. All you do is copy out an article and mail it in again.

The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy -- and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Beware of the man who denounces women writers; his penis is tiny and he cannot spell.

With a community that large and engaged, it needs a more open process of governance

Books never cease to astonish me. When I was a child, I knew--in the incontestable way that children know things--that God was an author who'd imagined me, which is why I (and everyone else) existed: to populate His narrative. My task was to imagine God in return: this was all He and I owed each other.

When I hear about some sensational new writer I sort of think, Shut up ... you've got to be around for a long time before you can really say you're a writer. You've got to stand the test of time, which is the only real test there is.

Prefer the active voice unless there's a good reason for using the passive