Mary McCarthy Quotes

If you are a writer you're at home, which means you're out of touch. You have to make excuses to get out there and look at how the world is changing.

I think being a writer was a crappy job when you just had typewriters. It was crappy when we just had ink and paper. And it's sort of crappy now. It's always just you and the page. That doesn't change.

I haven't always been a writer and I suppose I tiptoed around the idea of writing full time, because it's so isolating.

To be a writer, you need to like spending a lot of time by yourself in the company of imaginary people.

Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end, locked in your head, alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head.

I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.

There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and 'live' with the characters.

It's a dismally lonely business, writing.

Writing is a lonely profession.

The writer works in a lonely way.

I used to feel that I spent too much of my time in my pajamas doing nothing, and I'd think 'in the time that I don't spend writing, I could raise a family of five.' In a lot of ways, being a writer is lonely and alienating.

You're isolated as a writer, so I always envied people who could get up early and drive to work and fit into society.

When you're not as accessible, you get in a tent and get in your own head, and you start doing things that are a little out of touch. I think we've seen it happen with certain artists... people can't touch them; they're not touching people. They're only touching people in their circle.

I think everybody who relates to music is kind of isolated. It's lonely. Everyone who uses the creative side of their brain is that much removed from reality. They are looking for answers wherever they can find them.

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

It should surprise no one that the life of the writer - such as it is - is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.

I myself am just an ordinary woman. I simply had no choice.

I couldn't be a novelist for instance. It feels like a very lonely endeavor. I don't know that I could survive the solitude of that.

Once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels; no wonder they were without friends.

Each picture with its particular environment and unique personal relationships is a world unto itself - separate and distinct. Picture makers lead dozens of lives - a life for each picture. And, by the same token, they perish a little when each picture is finished and that world comes to an end. In this respect it is a melancholy occupation.

The writer is always to some extent in exile, wherever he is, because he is somehow outside, separated from others; there is always a distance.

I advise those who want to become writers to study veterinary medicine, which is easier. You don't want to be a writer unless you have no choice - and if you have no choice, good luck to you.

Most people just want to be part of the world, they want to live, love, and enjoy themselves - to take part in the world around them. Whereas artists are always retreating, locking the door, and inventing other worlds.

I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am. Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney.

If you do everything in your power to avoid writing and still can't, then you must be a writer.