Jack London Quotes

I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature.

I'm going to continue writing. I'll always be a storyteller. But I'm also taking time to enjoy my life.

I mean it's the writing, not the being read, that excites me.

The privilege I've had as a curator is not just the discovery of new works... but what I've discovered about myself and what I can offer in the space of an exhibition - to talk about beauty, to talk about power, to talk about ourselves, and to talk and speak to each other.

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

I don't think the goal is, 'How big a star did you ever become?' I think the goal is, 'Were you able to express yourself?'

For me art and chess are closely related, both are forms in which the self finds beauty and expression.

I didn't have any concept of Trainspotting being published. It was a selfish act. I did it for myself.

My art completes my life.

The purpose of art is to accumulate the human within the human being.

Whether I'm writing scripts or prose, the goal is identical. To give pleasure. Now whether I succeed or not is up for debate, and, mostly, I fail. But I try. I like to make things. It's a way to stay busy during one's ephemeral and confusing life.

There're no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and then I read them again, and it's the best thing.

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

That is my essential reason for writing, not for fame, not to be celebrated after death, but to heighten and create life all around me. I also write because when I am writing I reach the high moment of fusion sought by the mystics, the poets, the lovers, a sense of communion with the universe.

Writing is its own reward.

I was a very violent kid. I think movies and writing and art have been a way of channeling this. But I have will to defend people - it can be all sorts of people.

My work is trying to at least define myself on my own terms, and then if other people enjoy things that's a lovely addition.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something--or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip.

I should write for the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labors should be burnt every morning and no eye shine upon them.

Writing is the act of discovery.

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.