Jennifer Donnelly Quotes

Don't be a writer; it's a terrible way to live your life. There's nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don't expect anything from anybody.

The writer works in a lonely way.

I've often envied those writers in the Western world who can peacefully practice their craft and earn a living thereby. I cannot say that I would not have preferred that to the dangerous paths through which my art is taking me. However, we must go where the spirit moves us, and I can only hope that my travails will have brought pleasure in the future to many more people than my books will probably have done.

To be an honest writer, you have to be away from home, and totally alone in life.

The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement - if you can't deal with this, you needn't apply.

The thing is, my life is a country song. I don't need to be manufactured, and I don't need anyone to tell me what to say or what to sing.

I have a romantic conception of the writer's life, and the sort of writer's life that I admire is probably a childless life, possibly a marriageless life, certainly a travelling life - I'm in awe of how much D.H. Lawrence managed to get around. But that's never been something I'm capable of doing.

I always feel freelance writers are leading a heroic life. I think that is the real writer's life. On the other hand, it's good to have another job. It gives you something to do.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

I like the idea of a family, but I don't know that I'd like to be a single mum.

I'm a bore. I save all my energy for my characters.

The one thing about my life that's different from others is that I wake up for no one, and for some reason, that's just good for your creativity.

I'm always excited about music, but having spent so much time in its pursuit - well, my musical life is complicated.

As an actor, you are always waiting for someone else to be able to tell you when it's okay to work, and as a writer, you can just pick up your computer and start whenever you want. That is really freeing.

It's such a blessing having no family.

The price for living the life I have -- for any serious, devoted person, is that at times one must live alone, or feel alone. I think loneliness is associated in many people's minds when they think about success.

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.

I am of the firm opinion that no one should tell writers what to do, or what to write, or how to write.

...The very word 'fiction' implies another world, literally a different place, whereas no one claims that a dedicated sportsman is escaping his life, or a chef or a nurse. But the poor writer - the sci-fi one especially - is seen as running away. Bollocks. This is real, for me, and it's tough, it's fun, it's practical, and it's very, very important.

Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.

I'm a writer. I could not or would not ever run a business. I don't even have a secretary. And contrary to some of the stereotypes, entrepreneurs are not loners. I am.

A movie is kind of like being the captain of a ship, which is nice, but when I perform by myself it's just surfing on the water and nobody really knows what happens.

I realized very early that I was never going to make by living by writing string quartets. But I wanted to write music and I didn't want to have to do anything else.

As a writer, I can live somewhat independently, occupying nooks and crannies and finding meaning there. I can even live in my mind a good portion of most days.