Brian Aldiss Quotes

You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.

Of course, I write. I have stories to tell. But I don't want to do superficial stuff any more.

I write the best book that I can write each time.

One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either.

Write good content about stuff that you love. Readers will find you.

You write to suit some sense in yourself and trust that that will resonate with a certain wider readership.

I never wanted to be a celebrity writer. I wanted to be a good writer. I'm still trying to be a good writer. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

My friend Danny Clinch, who's a photographer, gave me a big, signed, numbered print of a photo he took of Eddie Vedder in Seattle. It's hung in my writing room where I have posters of writers that inspire me. They're all pointing at me. Tom Waits is like, 'Don't sell out!'

I love writing about things I know, and I like to be very honest in my music.

When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don't have an audience; I have a set of standards.

I'd advise all you songwriters out there, if you're getting into it for the business, go home and get a job digging ditches or something. Get a life. You'll learn a lot more, and you won't write a lot of rotten poetry.

You can write anything you want to,--a six-act blank verse, symbolic tragedy or a vulgar short, short story. Just so that you write it with honesty and gusto, and do not try to make somebody believe that you are smarter than you are. What's the use? You can never be smarter than you are.

Whenever you think you're writing what other people want to hear from you, and that it'll be commercial, you're doomed to disaster. Writing has to be as truthful and specific as we can make it. The minute we think that we're reaching more people and pleasing them, we get general. And audiences sense that and turn away, shun us.

I knew what I didn't want, and I knew whatever it was going to be it had to be believable and it had to come from me and I had to drive it. The way I write is very honest and when I think of the music that I listened to growing up, I loved it because I believed it.

The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.

I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead.

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.

Writing is such a strangely and radically private act, and yet its purpose is this great sense of connection and community. I mean, I wanted people to love the book. And the only way to get them to love it is to try to make it good for them. So of course the audience has to be considered.

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

The last thing you want to do is write songs about being in a band.

Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.

If you write for the critics, only the critics will read you.

I think I have patient fans that want quality over quantity. It's more important to me that the project be the best that it can be and the realest it can be rather than rushing a whole bunch of generic songs, because I could do that. I could just put together some songs real quick that I really like. I only write and I only sing for a purpose, so if its not then, it's not going to be rushed.

I've always had standards about writing well. There is art in this business. There is potentially great art.