Richard Burton Quotes

It was really written as most, I think, books are by writers - for themselves. There was something that just had to be written, in a way that it had to be written. If you know what I mean.

A very wise author once said that a writer writes for himself, and then publishes for money. I write for myself and publish just for the reader.

I have no idea why I write. The old standards are: I like to express my feelings, stretch my imagination, earn money.

Anything that feels like good characters, I am excited to do whether I write it or not. But if I don't find it in the world, I will write it myself.

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

I think that like all writers - and if any writer disagrees with this, then he is not a writer - I write primarily for myself.

I love writing. I've pursued it with a passion.

I write, I write, I always write.

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

Getting a book published made me feel a little bit sad. I felt driven by the need to write a book, rather than the need to write. I needed to figure out what was important to me as a writer.

I would be honored if someone reads my books and it inspires them to write their own work.

I've always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I learned to read, I've wanted to share stories with others the way my favorite writers shared their stories with me.

When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.

I don't think anyone is ever writing so that you can throw it away. You're always writing it to be something. Later, you decide whether it'll ever see the light of day. But at the moment of its writing, it's always meant to be something. So, to me, there's no practicing; there's only editing and publishing or not publishing.

That's point of writing: building what you need, right?

But, somewhere in there, I did have the thought that this really fits in with my thinking about what I wanted to do; with what has to be done by a writer in order to stay alive as a writer.

If I ever wrote a book, people would never believe it.

Writing is hard work, but a lot of fun, too. It allows me to live out some of my fantasies.

I enjoy writing.

I write what I'd like to read and just hope that, along the way, others might like to read them, too.

After a while, you start to realize that you should write a book you would want to read. I try to write a book I would enjoy.

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.

I have a really good idea for a novel and would like to just kind of try my hand at fiction. I'm starting to kind of get a really good body of work going from a literary standpoint. As long as the audience is there, man, I'll keep cranking them out.

Inspiration comes from so many sources. Music, other fiction, the non-fiction I read, TV shows, films, news reports, people I know, stories I hear, misheard words or lyrics, dreams... Motivation? The memory of the rush I get from a really good writing session - even on a bad day, I know I'll find that again if I keep going.