Mary Wesley Quotes

I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'

I always write the pieces I want to write.

I just write what I want to write.

I find you write with one person in mind. Usually for me that one person is my wife, because she's my most severe critic and understands best what I'm trying to do.

I've always assumed from the beginning that I had relatively few contemporaries among my readership. Not that I was consciously writing for a younger audience but that what I was doing interested a younger audience, or at least threatened them less.

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

Raymond Chandler managed to write about L.A. his whole career. Should I keep going writing about New York? Is that what I should be doing? Songwriting doesn't work that way.

I really write for people.

Generally, what adults want to know is my background, why I write what I write, and very personal insights that some say are inspiring.

I don't think about who the audience is for my books.

I think it's a very bad idea for someone to start writing for a readership.

I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.

The only other thing which I think is important is: Don't write a book or start a book with the expectation of communicating a message in a very important way.

I just write books, and I do it without any notion of what I should do or shouldn't do.

I do not really write for children: I write only for me and for the few people I hope to please, and I write for the story.

I write what's given me to write.

I thought Cheever was magnificent and that if I could write like him that would be the best I could do. And then I realized that what I really wanted to write had nothing to do with what he was doing.

I think the fundamental thing about writing fiction is that you write what interests you and what inspires you. It can't be forced. I see no need to write about anything else or any other type of world.

When I write, I don't think about messages for my readers.

We all want to write the kind of book that we want to read. If you put in the things that you are thinking about and create characters who feel like they could live - at least for me, that's the way I want to write.

I write to be read. I'm quite direct about that. I'm not writing to thrill colleagues or to impress the professors at the University of Iowa; that's not my goal.

Other people have hang-ups about what's literary or genre or whatever, and that's sort of not my problem. You're supposed to write what you have to write, and you're supposed to keep moving.

I write what I want to write.

If I don't know who I'm writing for, I make it up and pick somebody I'm writing for. That's really the only way to do it.

The first thing a writer needs to know is what kind of writer he/she is.