Michael Hastings Quotes

Writing will remain a passion project.

And write what you love - don't feel pressured to write serious prose if what you like is to be funny.

I hardly ever think about audience. I just try to tell a story for me. I write the kind of story I would like to read.

I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.

From a very young age my mother persuaded me that I could write for fun, but I had to have a proper job - very good advice.

I don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself.

I just want to start writing, whether or not any of it is useable or marketable.

Well I don't write, I attempt to scribble here and there. And no, nothing ever so grand as being published.

I've been writing for people long enough to know that it has got to feel comfortable coming out of their mouths, especially when you're doing something that is first person and is so near and dear to you.

I like writing my own stuff. If a book came along I would maybe do that.

I enjoy, in the summer, getting back to writing in my own voice.

I am always writing to myself.

If you are any kind of writer at all, you are in all of your writings.

The kind of true-life writing that is fun to read - that makes an ally of the reader - is the kind that you are so nervous about putting down on paper that you lock the Word file with a secret password and encrypt it - and all of it.

All of my records have been very personal, just writing more and more songs, you get better at being able to say what you feel.

For me, writing essays, prose and fiction is a great way to be self-indulgent.

Part of my problem as a young writer was that I was too much a New Yorker, always second-guessing the 'market.' I became so discouraged that I decided to write something that would please me alone - that became my sole criterion. And that was when I wrote 'Forgetting Elena,' the first novel I got published.

I just write the stuff I want to at the time, what feels right for me.

I think that I write about stuff that others don't write about. I don't have a bunch of love songs cuz I don't really have much boy experience. I just write about what I am actually going through in my real life.

I actually never liked writing on my own or in school until I'd had my blog for a while and realized I'd been writing every day for years.

If I haven't any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page.

TV is all about learning to write in someone else's voice, so if you do it long enough without selling your own project, they assume you don't have your own voice; you're just a good mimic.

I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

I write mostly for pleasure, and the reading should ideally be for pleasure, too.