Quotes About Authorship

I think everybody goes off and does their own vision. And I don't take responsibility for other people's work, frankly. It's bad enough taking responsibility for my own.

Writing's all I know. Frankly, I've never been able to do anything else.

You don't have to be a criminal to write about fraud!

I'm an awful control freak at times when it comes to production and stuff like that.

I'm definitely a writer. I don't even know how to freestyle.

You should always go through the first draft of a book all at once, I think, to get the best results. You can take time off after the first draft and come back to it fresh.

I'm not a person who would get up at 5 A.M. to write, but I could sacrifice my Friday night and just order in dinner, sit at home and get into it.

It's a friendly act to write a lighthearted book.

It's nice to have awards from time to time. There was a time when I had to make a living from my writing, and it wasn't always easy. I value awards a lot - and more so if there is a little cash with them!

I wasn't a frustrated writer who really wanted to act or a frustrated writer who really wanted to direct. I was really happy writing screenplays, and there's a lot of people who just do that - they're screenwriters.

I find contentment in the craft of writing and fulfillment in self-expression.

I'm a full-time writer, which means I have the entire day to get my work done. But that can also be bad, because that means I have the entire day to get in my way.

I've been writing full-time since about 1984 - mostly magazine features and columns.

Writing a book is usually a full-time job that takes years. I didn't have years. So I decided to crowdsource content for the book.

They were as real as Sara, and it was careless of them not to come out of the story shadowland and say, "Here I am — tell about me." But they did not — which was their fault and not mine. People who live in the story one is writing ought to come forward at the beginning and tap the writing person on the shoulder and say, "Hallo, what about me?" If they don't, no one can be blamed but themselves and their slouching, idle ways.

You never know, of course, when you write a book what its fate will be. Sink out of sight, soar to the sun–who knows. I love this quote from Frances Mayes. It pretty much sums up the Great Unknown of book writing.

I discovered how reading a book can make you want to write one.

Cook advised aspiring authors against waiting for inspiration, which he believed to be the last resort of the lazy writer. He himself had written two 33,000-word stories a week for months at a time. And this was precisely the schedule Gardner set for

I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.

But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.

you can't get rid of Shakespeare without abolishing the very notion of literature.

You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all.

This can be explained by my theory that living authors have a living relationship with their books. With their very existence they fight for or against them. The true, independent life of the book doesn't begin until the death of the author, or more correctly some time after his death, for these zealous men keep struggling for their books even a while after they have died. But then the book is left all alone and has to rely on the strength of its own heartbeat.

When I was only eleven years old, I decided to become a writer. I told this ambition in a letter to Laura Ingalls Wilder; the die was cast. How could I go back on my word?