Lionel Shriver Quotes

People are usually so disappointed with book-to-movie translations.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

Oftentimes when you see adaptations of books you like, you're let down. As an author, you assume that they are going to suck. A little bit of hope is dangerous.

I have made a number of movies that I have never seen. It's not a matter of ego. It's a matter of being disappointed. It's really a shame. It's just as difficult to make a movie that no one cares about as to make a hit.

I wondered if people might not have had enough of Simon Armitage and wondered whether I hadn't had enough of Simon Armitage.

I've rewritten other films and watched my writing be mutilated, but luckily, it's been mutilated anonymously.

You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet.

Long after Salinger sent me away, I continued to believe his standards and expectations were the best ones.

I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.

I longed for literary celebrity even as I saw with my own eyes how little happiness it brought.

I guess you go back to the old writer's adage that when they do your stuff in Hollywood, you smile sweetly upon your credit - if there is one - and enjoy the show.

I started out writing stories because that's all I wanted to read, but now I don't know if I'll ever write one again.

If you like the book, you'll hate the movie.

I started a short story but it was so dreary that even my pen threw up.

A writer can be subjective, even digressive, or introspective and certainly judgmental. This is a simplification, of course, but as a general rule, it holds true.

I got out of the business because I went from being the biggest artist on my record label to someone they didn't even want to have around.

Piece by piece I sent my first book of poems to American Poetry Review and was rejected one by one.

I'm not much of a Rick Moody fan, but I want to be a fan for the Rick Moody I thought might appear after his first two novels, 'Garden State' (1992) and 'The Ice Storm' (1994).

There's nothing sacred about the book you've written. The Bible says there's safety in a multitude of counselors. The movie is the movie, and the book is the book. They're different critters, and each must stand on their own merits.

When I write and develop things myself, I might work for a while on a script from a book, and then I go back and read the book and go back into it to see if I lost something: is there something there?

It is difficult to survive as an author in Sweden, so for commercial success, it is good idea to write crime, get yourself translated, and live happily ever after.

For a long time, Nella Larsen was the mystery woman of the Harlem Renaissance. In the late 1920s, she published two sophisticated novels, 'Quicksand' and 'Passing,' and then her writing life came to an end. She died in obscurity in 1964.

I've written on public matters, but I don't understand how anyone could tout me as a possible poet laureate when I wrote a poem on the abdication of King Charles III or about the sex life of the Royals... anybody who knew my work would know I'm not a contender.

I've published a couple of short novels in France that I didn't want to publish in English because I loved the characters too much to subject them to American critics who were not exactly favorable toward my work.

Gore Vidal was a man of immense literary talent, some of which he used well, some of which he wasted.