Quotes About Authorship

Everywhere I go some silly girl asks me if I've read 'This Side of Paradise.

Like so many men he had found that he had only one or two idea--that his little collection of pamphlets now in its fiftieth German edition contained the germ of all he would ever think or know.

I wish I was in print. It will be odd a year or so from now when Scottie assures her friends I was an author and finds that no book is procurable.

Copyright Page

We know that the book we will never write will be bad. Even worse will be the one we put off writing. At least the book that has been written exists.

My self-critical mind allows me to see only the defects and faults in my own work, and so I only have the courage to write snippets and snatches, brief notes on the theme of nonexistence, and yet even the little I write is imperfect.

The nobleman thinks clearly, writes clearly, and controls his emotions, though not his feelings; the bookkeeper controls neither emotions nor feelings, and what he thinks depends on what he feels.

It has always disappointed me to read the allusions in Amiel's diary to the fact that he published books. That's where he falls down. How great he would be otherwise!

One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.

Flannery O'Connor, in a note to the editor of Wise Blood that pertained to changes he wanted to make, wrote Perhaps I am prematurely arrogant . . .

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live, and so far as he is concerned, a living deformed character is acceptable and a dead whole one is not.

You can choose what you write but you can't choose what you make live.

If I even do get to be a fine writer it will not be because I am a fine writer, but because God has given me credit for a few of the things He kindly wrote for me.

i write because i don't know what i think until i read what i say

It's very hard for me to write back to some of the fan mail, so one of the things I wanted to do was reach out through a book.

My fans want me to talk to them. And even if they want to be critical, I want to hear what they've got to say.

I worked for half a cent a word. I'm not a fast writer to begin with, so for the first few years I had do other things.

The more I want a book to be done, the faster I type because I just want to get it out.

They lard their lean books with the fat of others work.

Because characters are your creations, you are the one who ultimately gets to decide their fate.

You can win more arguments then you might think as a writer, even though you legally have no recourse, and your script can get muddied and altered in any way possible. You can use reason, logic, and passion to argue persuasively for a case in your favor.

My favourite writer is John Maxwell Coetzee.

I have no literary fears.

One of my fears is not writing. I don't know how to do anything else.