William Faulkner Quotes

It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me - that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.

I'm so focused on trying to craft the story that I'm in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.

The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.

I've never been part of a movie I would watch over and over again, and I'm really proud of it.

I'm trying to focus on my job as I see it, which is to write the next thing and to remain, to the degree that I ever was, a noticer.

As I wrote more I became more critical of myself and I think that you have to be your harshest judge. I don't ever believe that what I write is my best work. I always think that I can hone it. I can always think that I can make it a little bit better.

When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don't have an audience; I have a set of standards.

I'll go on making films until I make one that pleases me from the first to the last frame. Then I'll quit.

And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive.

And what I've found over time is that for me to write a poem that I think is worthy that I can live with, two things have to happen.

When I'm writing something, if there's a part that's good for me, then I'll play it. Otherwise, I don't. And I notice that there are less and less parts for me in my own writing.

What I worry about is working in this serial medium, where people are talking about your stories before they're done, we have this instant feedback loop now. I'm very active on Tumblr and I have a very active engagement with readers and I love it, but I don't want to start writing to try to please someone else. I don't want my meter to get skewed.

It's tremendously hard work. Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you know you're not quite there and you're redoing it and redoing it and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard.

Sometimes when you write a thing you think, 'Oh, this is good', and it's not a modesty or an immodesty thing, you just... it's just the same with anything; when you write a piece you just figure, 'Oh yeah, I'm on a roll here. This is good; I'm getting the hang of this'. Some pieces are better than others.

You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.

The novelist must be his own most harsh critic and also his own most loving admirer and about both he must say nothing.

If you ever write a book, I can only give you one piece of advice. Don't let your parents get involved.

When I'm writing, it's about the page. It's not about the movie. It's not about cinema. It's about the literature of me putting my pen to paper and writing a good page and making it work completely as a document unto itself. That's my first artistic contribution. If I do my job right, by the end of the script, I should be having the thought, 'You know, if I were to just publish this now and not make it . . . I'm done.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.

I'm definitely feeling whatever's going on pretty hard. It's like playing Barbies. You're holding the Barbies, but all of the action is happening inside of your head. You might be holding them or even speaking out loud, but really, all of the animation is internal. That's sort of how I feel about my writing. And then the really awful thing is that at the end of the day after crying and experiencing things, then you look at what you've written and you're like, "Hmm, there's half a page that's good here." Then you throw out everything else.

I never claimed to be a low-maintenance gal, but when I'm writing, it's particularly challenging. I lose things constantly: my watch, my glasses, my papers, my mind.

I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite.

I'm not writing novels, the screenplays are my novels, so I'm gonna write it the best that I can. If the movie never gets made, it'd almost be okay because I did it. It's there on the page.

Though there is one part of writing that is solid and you do it no harm by talking about it, the other is fragile, and if you talk about it, the structure cracks and you have nothing.

I had read enough mediocre scripts and was determined not to inflict another one on the world.