Mary MacLane Quotes

The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one's greatness of soul.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.

You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.

My ideal is a book that is perfect on every page, that gives you tremendous aesthetic joy on every page. I suppose I am trying to write such a book.

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones - just as a young writer or poet might have to write hundreds of poems before writing his first significant one.

I want to write books that can truly become a legacy and bring benefits to people.

I don't think anything you've written is immortal as yet.

The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.

I'm not saying it never occurred to me to want to write a masterpiece, but I really doubt I could.

The first thing you have to understand is that I was not desperate to be a writer. I was never a closet writer filing away notes in a cupboard.

It always seemed much better to be a writer - a Real Writer - than a successful hack.

I knew, the second I read 'Humans,' that no matter how successful the show was, the script was superb and like nothing else I'd ever seen.

I wrote poems. That is my work. I am convinced... I believe that what I wrote will be useful to people not only now but in future generations.

I don't think there was a time I ever thought of myself as anything but a writer. I thought I was going to be the next Toni Morrison.

When I read 'Greenberg,' I had a really strong sense if I could be any kind of writer I wanted to be, I'd be this kind of writer. And I felt like, even in my experiences, what writing I had done, even on a small scale, when it was good, it shared some quality with it.

As a filmmaker, you aspire to want to make movies that can hopefully stand the test of time, but you never know when that will happen or if that will happen.

I never had a highfalutin' view of what I write.

I was well read and knew languages, but I didn't want to become Ezra Pound. I wanted to write poetry that people like my parents might respond to.

In the writers' room, the challenge is always to tell interesting stories in unexpected ways, so we try to never limit ourselves in how we accomplish that.

O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!

I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

The most beautiful prose paragraph yet written by any American.

I want to leave an album behind that is classic, that people in 50 years will refer to and pass on to their children. An album that you never bored of.