Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.
In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices.
I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various
If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.
I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various.
I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal
I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal.
Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.
I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.
There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.
There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough.
When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.
I look at everything. God gave me eyes and I look at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers of the field. I casually inspect the universe.
You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the time to take the chance to write what you wish.
The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises.
An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.
Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own
Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own.
Writing is like a contact sport, like football. Why do kids play football? They can get hurt on any play, can't they? Yet they can't wait until Saturday comes around so they can play on the high school team, or the college team, and get smashed around. Writing is like that. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it!
Horror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well.... Eventually I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven.