Quotes About Authorship

That's what a writer is -- a conqueror of fears.

Kad ne pišemo, mu?e nas takve trivijalne brige u kojima je središnja tema naš ego, ego, ego, pa i kriti?ari govore o toj istoj temi - ego, ego, ego. ?iji potpis? ?ija knjiga? Koja nagrada? Ali, jezik nema odre?enog autora - baš kao što rijeka ne brije ho?e li ostati u nekoj državi.

I don't want to be famous per se, but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.

one person, of whose acts a great multitude … have made themselves every one the author" in order that peace will prevail.

Toni Morrison read The New York Times every day with pen in hand, making corrections she felt necessary, deleting words or inserting them as she went along.

The history of books shows the humblest origin of some of the most valued, wrought as these were out of obscure materials by persons whose names thereafter became illustrious. The thumbed volumes, now so precious to thousands, were compiled from personal experiences and owe their interest to touches of inspiration of which the writer was less author than amanuensis, himself the voiced word of life for all times.

The most difficult thing about writing, I'm discovering, is not the act of constructing the sentences themselves. It's deciding what to put in, and where, and what to leave out. I'm constantly second-guessing myself. I chose the accident, but I could just as easily have started with any point during my thirty-five years of life before that. Why not start with: " I was born in the year 19-, in the city of -?

The young Melville felt constricted by prevailing standards of taste, and knew that in order to make a place for himself in the emerging American literary scene he would have to push his readers to expand their range of curiosity and tolerance.

I was a writer, after all. Shouldn't I have a book?

I wish I could say I write 9-5. It's usually more like 8-6, every day but the weekends.

From 1999 on - until 2003 - I covered publishing in a weekly column for Wired.com and wrote for several other publications - altogether writing over 150 articles.

Of the 60 movies I wrote, more than half were written in two weeks or less.

Normally, I spend a week on the outline and take two weeks to write the book.

I write an actual script rather quickly - a draft will take me two weeks - but I write a lot of drafts. My big thing is I don't re-read. When I write, I never re-read back. I'll send it, because if I re-read back, it will cripple me.

A couple of weeks after that, Zebra Books phoned with an offer, and I accepted.

I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward.

I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books. While I'm writing a book, which I probably do two out of every three years, it's like having a second job. I squeeze in the hours when I can.

All of the little entries in 'The Cows' were written in an irregular way. There might be one or two done one day, and then two weeks might go by or four weeks, and then they were put in an order or sequence.

I think I wrote 'The Trysting Place' in about three weeks. But it was inexperience that made me have to do that. I didn't feel good about the book all the time I was writing it. It felt a bit like wading through molasses.

You know how some people write every day at a certain point? I'm not like that. I carry something around for a long time. I weigh the words and the sentences. I weigh the paragraphs. The process is much more meditative for me.

I've planned book tours for myself, whether or not anybody wants to hear what I have to say. I've weighed in on things like what the cover looks like, what the copy looks like, how it's going to be promoted - just every aspect of it.

It's weird being an author because it's different than writing songs. You put so much more of yourself out there to be judged because it's a memoir. So when the reviews come in, they all feel really personal. Some people are just going to hate you no matter what. Personally, I never believe good reviews.

When I write a novel, every word is mine. I welcome suggestions from my editor, but in the end, I make all the final decisions.

When I was publishing my first books, the previous generation of authors was fading away, so I was welcomed because I was a new author.