Gulzar Quotes

Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego.

I wouldn't write a book, because saying the word I over and over again would nauseate me.

There's a certain possessiveness of writers sometimes.

When I moved from Cambridge, I donated all my fiction. I carefully cut out pages the authors had autographed for me. I didn't want those autographed books showing up on eBay.

I had my autograph down by the age of 13. I used to sign it everywhere.

Acting can be very selfish and all-consuming.

I love to personalize things. I love to make things my own. I like to name everything - from cars to iPhones to the socks I just lost.

I try to satisfy the desires that people have to have their books personalized. That's a value, or feature, of bibliophilia that may vanish. How do you get your e-book signed? The idea of people standing in line to get my signature in their book, it's hard to turn them away.

My version of Dolly was mine, and it shouldn't be anyone else's.

Obsessing about my image - that's not my shtick.

Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines - not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

In my more pompous moments I like to think of myself as a writer rather than a humorist, but I suppose that's merely the vanity of advancing age.

The books are the books, and a lot of the stuff is some version of your id or your ego.

...it is a sneaking piece of cowardice for authors to put feigned names to their works, as if, like bastards of their brain, they were afraid to own them.

Writing a book is the most terrifying thing that I've ever done. It's so much harder than writing for television because it is a completely different skill set.

I have not Googled myself. I have not looked at myself on Amazon. It could drive you wild.

I think the book you always like best is the one you're about to write.

It's very hard to be an experimental woman writer. If I had been writing under a pseudonym, just initials, I might have a different reputation - but, then I couldn't be myself either.

There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate.

Believe me, I wish this song was yours instead of mine.

I've got at least one tiny corner of the universe I can make just the way I want it.

Sometimes artist like to catch themselves looking out, let the world see them for once. It's a signature. This one is a very bold one. But this is also a witnessing. We want to remember, and we want to be remembered. That's why we paint.

I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.

Mine, ... Mine is what she is.