Jonathan Swift Quotes

I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.

I have been writing since I was a kid and thought what I wrote down could one day be made into a book.

Most writers want to share their essay or book much too quickly. Those who accept the pain of hard work and revising are those who get published.

A lot of times, when people send me books to read - new writers mostly - I find that the book is still in a draft stage and that before it can leave the writer's hands and head to a publisher, it needs about five more revisions. Some people don't want to do that.

I think, to Chelsea's [Handler] point, I still need directing because sometimes I go a little bit off beat in a way that it's like, rein it in. I welcome that kind of support.

That's all you have to ask from yourself writing a book. That it's the best you can do and that you did it without any ego involved and that you did it for somebody else. That's the best you can do.

There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.

If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not.

Write what you want to read. So many people think they need to write a particular kind of book, or imitate a successful style, in order to be published. I've known people who felt they had to model their book on existing blockbusters, or write in a genre that's supposed to be "hot right now" in order to get agents and publishers interested. But if you're writing in a genre you don't like, or modeling yourself on a book you don't respect, it'll show through. You're your first, most important reader, so write the book that reader really wants to read.

Nothing you see on the Internet is mine unless it comes from one of my albums, books, HBO specials, or appeared on my website.

I think once you have done all you can to a manuscript, let it find its way in the world.

He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.

The authors who affect contempt for a name in the world put their names to the books which they invite the world to read.

For many years I wanted to be a rock star but of course that didn't work out. I did however write on napkins and pieces of paper sentences and occurrences. I decided maybe I should write a book because I had been writing so much. I'm actually writing a book based on The Room that will hopefully be published soon.

I'm no use to anybody,' I say. 'I'm a cérébrale, can't you see that?' Thinking how funny a book would be, called 'Just a Cérébrale or You Can't Stop Me From Dreaming'. Only, of course, to be accepted as authentic, to carry any conviction, it would have to be written by a man. What a pity, what a pity!

By the time you write the last page you have done half the book. The other half tends to get done in about five weeks; I do several drafts, very, very furiously rewriting. I literally do more or less nothing else and I stick with it and go through it and I begin to hate it.

I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.

And the books you write. They're not you. They're not me sitting here, this Henry Miller. They belong to someone else. It's terrible. You can never rest.

We write frankly and freely, but then we modify before we print.

I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me.

Any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.

Write your goddamned book now. The world awaits.

Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances.

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will not get any criticism. I might as well write the book that I want to write.