Edmund White Quotes

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

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.

Fame, money and the size of the market are not very important to me. What is, is writing a book that is worth doing and then publishing it. I don't write books for entertainment, for people to pass the time then throw away.

The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.

I'm probably one of the few authors in this country who could very comfortably live off my writing.

I've wanted to be an author as long as I can remember. English was always my favorite subject at school, so why I went on to do a degree in French is anyone's guess.

My hope is that I hit it big with something, and then I'll have enough of a cushion to carve out time to write a book. That would be my passion project.

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.

I love telling stories and I love writing so the fact that I can do it professionally is something that I've always been very grateful for.

I've always been very grateful that enough people have enjoyed reading what I've written that I've been able to pursue writing professionally.

So long as readers keep reading and my publishers keep publishing, I plan to keep on writing. I'd have to be an idiot to be burnt-out in this job.

Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.

Zombie books were going to be my passion projects, but certainly not pay the bills. I thought I was going to have to get a real job on a sitcom or something, and have my zombie books to remind myself I was still a writer at heart. I never thought I could actually pay my bills and write what I wanted.

I don't want to be famous per se, but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.

You cannot predict literary success; the only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well.

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.

I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.

I knew I wanted to be a writer at 13. Before that, I told everyone I was going to be an artist.

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.

Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal, or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction, but often it's really just about the money, the perceived prestige.

Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.

It took seven years from the day I decided I wanted to write fiction to actually getting a book published.

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

I like going after good material, well-written material.

Back in the 1980s, when I was a lowly editorial assistant by day and trying to be a novelist by night, no god reigned so supreme as the god of literary prose.