105 Quotes About Authorship

Who can say they saw a whole play or read a whole book? Each has their own experience, their own play, their own book

You’re in a story and the body writing it is an asshole. You had to know that, given the action. The story you’re in tells you like firing a gun…[I] had enough of it, of things happening one after another and no end in sight. Of reversals and falling in love and tragic flaws and by God if I see another motif in my business I will shoot it dead.

After the third [San Miguel], I am likely to announce that all writing is fantasy anyway: that to set any event down in print is immediately to begin to lie about it, thank goodness; and that it's no less absurd and presumptuous to try on the skin of a bank teller than that of a Bigfoot or a dragon.

If writing didn't create emotional risk, then it wouldn't be worth doing.

Write, Woman. You bleed different blood. Write!

You get a good review, and it’s like crack. You need another hit. And another. And another. I know authors are like Tinkerbell and generally need applause to survive, but it’s a slippery slope.

There is this presumption, in those who feel destined for art and above all literature: we act as if we had received an investiture, but in fact no one has invested us with anything, it is we who have authorized ourselves to be authors.

Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress truth.

To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace?