Quotes About Authorship

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A writer can never have complete command or mastery over what s/he writes. Neither can a reader.

There's something paralyzing about being a writer that you have to escape.... The 26 letters distance us from our own hesitations and they make us sound as if we know what we're doing. We know grammar, we know prose, but actually we're all just struggling in the dark, really.

Agatha didn't have an office of her own. She wrote her books wherever she found herself, so long as she had a table and a typewriter. Really, she didn't even think of herself as an author. Her primary occupation and identity was Married Lady.

You can't edit a blank page

Every one of my books had killed me a little more.

I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.

Benim durumum biraz kar???k burada. Yerim belli de?il; okuyucuyla yazar aras?nda bir noktada ç?rp?n?p duruyorum. Durumumun ayd?nlanmas? için Asliye Hukuk Mahkemesi'ne ba?vurmay? dü?ünüyorum. Bana tan?kl?k eder misiniz Esat A?abey?

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.

In order for me to understand who I am, I must begin to understand who she was. That is my reason for writing and assembling this book. It has always been my way to sort through my feelings by writing.

the point here was appropriation via antithesis.

One writer excels at a plan or a title page, another works away the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index.

Le opere postume hanno lo squisito vantaggio di risparmiarti le scemenze o le perfidie di coloro che senza saper scrivere e neanche concepire un romanzo pretendono di giudicare anzi bistrattare chi lo concepisce e lo scrive.

Wer für Kinder schreibt, übt den Beruf des Schriftstellers unter erschwerten Bedingungen aus, und dies freiwillig ... Wer für Erwachsene schreibt, schreibt ausschließlich für Erwachsene. Wer für Kinder schreibt, schreibt automatisch für Erwachsene mit." [As quoted on Preußler's official website .]

for the time being I gave up writing-there is already too much truth in the world-an overproduction which apparently cannot be consumed!

Whatever I tried to write was verse.

Egy idézet Thomas Manntól – vagy GoethétÅ'l?, minden idézet vagy Thomas Manntól, vagy GoethétÅ'l való – mutatja az irányt: Író az, akinek gondot okoz az írás.

when it comes to being a writer: getting out of your own way, and getting rid of the countless negative thoughts that tell you what a hopelessly uninteresting specimen of humanity you are.

For Marie Force, who reached out to me in 2011 when I lost my newspaper job and encouraged me to self-publish — and then showed me how. From notes on a napkin at RWA13 to reality, here is the book we talked about. Thanks for everything.

To whom do books belong? The books we read and the books we write are both ours and not ours. They're also theirs.

Do you think that Hemingway knew he was a writer at twenty years old? No, he did not. Or Fitzgerald, or Wolfe. This is a difficult concept to grasp. Hemingway didn't know he was Ernest Hemingway when he was a young man. Faulkner didn't know he was William Faulkner. But they had to take the first step. They had to call themselves writers. That is the first revolutionary act a writer has to make. It takes courage. But it's necessary

That first voice, the voice of home, is the one the writer must protect from the contempt or disdain or disregard of any critic, no matter how famous or capable that critic may be. It is not all that a mature writer needs; surely every writer needs the tools of literary criticism and as much knowledge of various traditions as possible—but a profound acceptance of and trust in one's own voice is the first and most important thing the writer needs.

The cool thing about writing is that there is really never a typical day. Sometimes I get a rhythm going and head off to work every morning and come home at night. Sometimes I'll write for two days straight and then be utterly blank for the next two.

One of the things everybody seems to want to ask writers is, "Where do you get your ideas?" When people ask me this, my usual response is, "Ideas are the easy part. The hard part is writing them down.