It’s a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own making.
Gustav Flaubert
It’s a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own making.
Gustav Flaubert
My Job
Since keeping house and raising kids
don’t count as jobs, I only ever had one.
I started out as a prentice
at five years old, and at near eighty-five
in most ways I am still one,
being a slow learner. And the work
is quite demanding.
The boss who drives the shiny yellow car
and those nine sisters up there by the spring
are tough, but fair. There’s times
you can’t get them to listen,
but they’ve always got their eyes on you.
They don’t let botched work pass.
Sometimes the pay is terrible.
Sometimes it’s only fairy gold.
Then again sometimes the wages
are beyond imagination and desire.
I am glad to have worked for this company.
Ursula K. Le Guin
The writer must never attempt to impose himself upon his subject. He must not try to mold it according to what he believes his readers or editors want to read. His initial task is to come to know his subject intimately, to understand its every aspect, to let it fill his mind. Then at some turning point, the subject takes command and the true and the true act of creation begins….The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subject has to tell him.
Rachel Carson
One of my theories about short stories is that their titles and first lines ought to be memorable because if not memorable they will not be remembered, and if not remembered the stories will not be reprinted (because no one can find them).
Damon Knight
The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
John Steinbeck
Unfortunately, many young writers are more concerned with fame that their own work….It’s much more important to write than to be written about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Garc%C3%ADa_M%C3%A1rquz
Writers don’t need love; all they require is money.
John Osborne
If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favour.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
If you write what you yourself sincerely think and feel and are interested in, the chances are very high that you will interest other people as well.
Rachel Carson