Gore Vidal Quotes

Following takes why. Transactions take what. It has to be real. It has to be the same for writing a book.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song.

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will not get any criticism. I might as well write the book that I want to write.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

I'm writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a writer.

If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.

Perhaps, it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would be written at all. It might be better to ask yourself "Why?" afterwards than before. Anyway, the force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.

Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away inside us.

Whatever's going on with me at the time of writing is going to find its way into the piece. If that doesn't happen, then what the hell am I doing? So if I'm writing 'Inglourious Basterds,' and I'm in love with a girl and we break up, that's going to find its way into the piece.

I wrote the first draft of 'Plan B' the summer after I turned 21.

I love having written. Sometimes I love writing. I love to revise. Revising is my favorite part of writing.

Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is—an intense form of thought.

You either have to write or you shouldn't be writing. That's all.

A book, while it is being written, has an intense life of its own which you share.

If you're writing, you're a writer. If you're talking about it or thinking about it, I'm not so sure. Writing is ninety-eight percent work and two percent magic.

A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.

Your book grows. The early part of your book is growing still while you are writing the later part of your book.

No two books come out the same way. Some I write by the seat of my pants; others are planned in minute detail.

I'm gonna write from personal experience, from emotion, from whatever the hell I'm feeling that day.

Books are great for if you want to work on the craft of writing for yourself, or, you know, to write novels or indie films, stuff like that.