O. Henry Quotes

You'll go mad trying to figure out what people want. I don't bother. I write the stories I want to read.

When I'm writing, I really want to satisfy myself. I've got a story that I am working on and struggling with, and I want to tell it the most effective way I can. That's really what I struggle with. And the thought of who may be reading it may be there somewhere in the back of my mind - I'll never say it's not there because I don't know - but it's not really what I'm thinking about.

I try to make my music interesting to me first, then hopefully other people will find it interesting, too.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

You have to write the story that's at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won't ring true.

If you're well-known, you're at the risk of becoming your own character. When you're alone, as a writer, you have to be unknown, putting it all on the paper.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

I have never written out of a desire to be controversial.

I don't write anything if I'm not agreeable and liking it. I'm not one of these slavers who wads up paper. It comes or it doesn't.

Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It's impossible to know what others want, so don't waste time trying to guess.

I only make those films that I would love to watch.

I only want to make music I like and that I can enjoy myself and be proud of.

You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself.

It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write.

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about what's "too much" what's "enough" or if you're telling the "right" stories, just do good work.

It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.

I tended not to be concerned about whether a song was going to be a hit when I wrote it. Because it became evident that none of us knew what was a hit and what wasn't. So I thought if I just write what I like, why shouldn't people like what I like?

If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you'll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they'll kick your ass every time.

Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.

Do not write to impress others. Authors who write to impress people have difficulty remaining true to themselves. A better path is to write what pleases you and pray that there are others like you. Your first and most important reader is you. If you write a book that pleases you, at least you know one person will like it.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

I want to make music that I like; not something that I have to make because I think it's going to sell.

I prefer writing originals.

Write what you think is good, is the whole of the law.

I try to please myself. I don't try to anticipate what people want to see.