Quotes About Authorship

Tell him I think writing is lousy, Bill said. Go on, tell him. Tell him I'm ashamed of being a writer.

How good a book is should be judged by the man who writes it by the excellence of the material that he eliminates.

The first draft is always shit.

The author must write what he has to say, not speak it.

I have tried to write by the old rule that how good a book is should be judged by the man who writes it by the excellence of the material that he eliminates.

I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can't do it.

I have tried simply to write the best I can; sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

But, in yourself, you said that you would write about these people ... and for once it would be written by some one who knew what he was writing of. But he would never do it, because each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.

write. There was going to be everything that a man needed to write except to be alone. Zelda

To hear him talk of it, you would never know how very good it was, except that he had the shyness about it that all non-conceited writers have when they have done something very fine, and I hoped he would get the book quickly so that I might read it.

Look, if you can't write why don't you learn to write criticism?

A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes part of the experience of the person who reads it.

I hope when I die, they won't put on my tombstone, 'He wrote Miss Jane Pittman .' Put anything else, but don't put just that.

My temperament and my instinct had told me alike that the author, who writes at his own emergency, remains and needs to remain at his private remove. I wished to be, not effaced, but invisible - actually a profound position. Perspective, the line of vision, the frame of vision - these set a distance.

Lumea are nevoie s? te cuprind?, pentru totdeauna, într-o definiÅ£ie simpl?, scurt? ÅŸi definitiv?, asupra c?reia niciodat? s? nu revin?. Iar insul este obligat s? se conformeze propriei sale definiÅ£iuni. Uneori îi place. Alteori se sufoc?.

Andrew Neiderman

I can barely remember what I wrote yesterday, let alone 10 years ago.

The idea that you're not a writer until you're published is a lie.

A writer's job is to tell the truth.

My advice is not to wait to be struck by an idea. If you're a writer, you sit down and damn well decide to have an idea.

But I've come to realize writing's not a noble calling. Like you said, it's all about marketing, isn't it?

I think that if you write what you love to read, that will be what your audience wants to read, too.

I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.

Having a book published whenever is a huge honor.