Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

Whether I'm writing scripts or prose, the goal is identical. To give pleasure. Now whether I succeed or not is up for debate, and, mostly, I fail. But I try. I like to make things. It's a way to stay busy during one's ephemeral and confusing life.

I would say that writing, both the act of writing, and of course reading of other people's work is, for me, supreme joy.

There're no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and then I read them again, and it's the best thing.

There's still a fascination with somebody who can write at book length, no matter what the book is.

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

I feel very privileged to get to read and write and not to have to do things that I don't like, and I don't want to give that up. Everything else is just a bonus and often a distraction from the writing, reading, and traveling that gives me the most pleasure.

Authorship is, according to the spirit in which it is pursued, an infamy, a pastime, a day-labor, a handicraft, an art, a science, a virtue.

At the time of writing, I don't write for my friends or myself either; I write for it, for the pleasure of it.

I mean it's the writing, not the being read, that excites me.

Writing makes me happy.

I should have written books instead of reading them.

writing is the profound pleasure and being read the superficial.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once.

Write for pleasure and publish for money.

I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.

I think one of the reasons I'm so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at the same time, which is why my revisions are so sustained.

Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

The search for the word gets no easier but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.

I never imagined I'd write a book.

Writing a novel is a lot like reading one.

Nothing can injure a man's writing if he's a first-rate writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there's not anything can help it much. The problem does not apply if he is not first rate because he has already sold his soul for a swimming pool.

A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist.

Publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

Writing novels takes up about 100% of my available working time.