Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

I write because I've always written, can't stop. I am a writing animal. The way a silk worm is a silk-producing animal.

Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.

The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.

Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.

I write, I write, I always write.

I have to write and play. If I became an electrician tomorrow, I'd still come home at night and write songs.

Mostly, you become a writer not because you want to get rich or famous, but because you have to write; because there is something inside that must come out.

The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn't very good.

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

I was never a writer.

Everything in my past, in my training, everything that has been most essential in my activity up to now has made me above all a man who writes, and it is too late for that to change.

But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.

I'm a writer. I write not only for a living, I write because I'm a writer.

There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.

Why do I write? I guess that's been asked of every writer. I don't know. It isn't any massive compulsion.

Who often reads, will sometimes wish to write.

If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for your friends, get a blog. If you want to write for others...become an author.

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

The number of people who can copulate properly may be few; the number who can write well are infinitely fewer.

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

Real seriousness in regard to writing being one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

Well, I have to write. A lot of people forget that. They think I’m sort of crazy baffoon who can’t make up his mind what to do in life

There's only one good reason to be a writer-we can't help it! We'd all like to be rich, famous and successful, but if those are our goals, we're off on a wrong foot...I just wanted to earn enough money so I could work at home on my writing.

I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a "killing." They are interested in being a writer not in writing. . . If this is what you are interested in, I am not going to be much use to you.

A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job.