John Burnside Quotes

My first book was so horrible I have deleted all copies of it. Thankfully, it was before the Internet, so there are no lurking caches of it anywhere.

I spent four of my five years at Stanford writing a novel I was unable to sell.

I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years.

Not being published would be great. When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane.

If you're trying to be a successful writer, and you go into a second-hand bookshop, it's the graveyard of people whose books haven't been wanted.

The truth is, I wrote a novel when I was 23. It's hideously bad. Truly rotten.

I've had a lot of books rejected in my time. My first novel, which didn't get published, was, with hindsight, crashingly dull.

Sometimes films don't turn out the way they were envisioned on paper. And when that happens, one must just forget the entire episode.

I'd never been published when I was young.

Yes, I am a failed playwright. I had three shows on Broadway by the time I was 30. They all flopped, and I fled.

As soon as he hit it, I thought I had it. But I lost it when it went into the lights. I did my best.

I thought that I would have a huge literary novel coming out when I was, like, 29. I quit my banking job, and I was halfway through my second novel - and I will never publish it, because it's very mediocre.

The day I won an Emmy was also the day my father passed away. I received a call from my sister on the way to the ceremony and had to turn my car around and catch the first flight back to Karachi.

I write as a matter of need - seven books and God knows how many short stories before anyone published me.

Nobody in Hollywood ever sets out to make a bad movie ever but about 99% of the time, that's what happens.

During my years as a press secretary, I developed a powerful internal filter, which worked to strip all things 'off message' from my thoughts before they came out of my mouth. It didn't always work, of course, and I said more than a few things I regretted.

You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: 'Holy Christ, whaddya know - I'm still around!' It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.

I wrote one terrible manuscript after another for a decade and I guess they gradually got a little less terrible. But there were many, many unpublished short stories, abandoned screenplays and novels... a Library of Congress worth of awful literature.

In times of social tension we pull back on expression, and we always end up believing that it was the wrong thing to do.

I did try to write fiction. I wrote 10 novels. And they were all just awful.

I always wish I had another shot at it. But, listen, 'Godzilla' is something that I grew up loving. We worked hard to go make one. We kind of blew it. I think everyone gets one.

If you're going to worry about what you said on TV, then don't get on TV.

Early on, I tried fiction, but I wasn't very good at it. I wrote a very bad novel that is thankfully sitting in a drawer somewhere.

I was unfortunate at Tottenham.

I cannot hide being sorry for failing to move to Juventus.