Garth Nix Quotes

The thing about being a writer is that you never have to ask, 'Am I doing something that's worthwhile?' Because even if you fail at it, you know that it's worth doing.

The best part of being a writer for me is immersing myself in a fictional world, which is the opposite of being on social media. At the same time, if no one ever read my work, if I was writing solely for myself, I bet it would be lonely and a lot less fun.

With writing and publishing, my only aim is to live in the aesthetic pleasure dome.

I may not be much good at most things, but if I didn't have the pleasure of planning and installing shows, and doing it better than anyone else, I would have stopped buying art many years ago.

For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded.

But Basquiat is the first thing I've done that I'm really proud of.

People do stop me and talk to me about something they saw that they loved. It is very satisfying, but I have my own opinions.

I am writing to please myself, though there is a feeling in some place in my head that this may be publishable. I haven't been writing for nothing.

Whether it's a huge hit or sold five copies, as long artistically and creatively I can stand by what I did, then I'll feel successful.

I haven't many years left ahead of me and I must devote all my time to painting, in the hope of achieving something worthwhile in the end, something if possible that will satisfy me.

I don't have an audience in mind when I write. I'm writing mainly for myself. After a long devotion to playwriting I have a good inner ear. I know pretty well how a thing is going to sound on the stage, and how it will play. I write to satisfy this inner ear and its perceptions. That's the audience I write for.

All people are struggling to be creative in some way, and the artist is the one who has succeeded in this task of life.

I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature.

There're no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and then I read them again, and it's the best thing.

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write?

The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.

I stand by the Lost finale. It's the story that we wanted to tell, and we told it. No excuses. No apologies. I look back on it as fondly as I look back on the process of writing the whole show. And while I'll always care what you think, I can't be a slave to it anymore. Here's why: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really … I was alive.

You do the work and you want people to see it; but, um while I'm doing the work, the result doesn't matter at all to me. Ultimately, I don't, I don't care whether the film is - you know - some big giant box-office bonanza and I don't care if its a complete flop. To me, when a film gets made and it's actually finished it's a success. They're all a success in their own way.

I go on writing so that I will always have something to read.

My first book really did change my life. It allowed me to fully express myself. There was a sense that I was worth something as an artist.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.

I mean it's the writing, not the being read, that excites me.

It was an interesting thing to do. Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions.

If you enjoyed making a thing, and you’re proud of the thing you made, that’s enough. Not everyone is going to like it, and that’s okay.