Thomas Lennon Quotes

I don’t write things to benefit the world. If it happens that they do, swell. I didn’t set out to do that. I set out to have a hell of a lot of fun.

I continue to write. It's just one of those things that I do. I'll have periods when I write and periods when I don't. But you don't want it to become a discipline really. If it becomes a discipline, it becomes a chore and that's no good.

There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast. It's like nothing else. It's like a love affair, it goes on and on, and doesn't end in marriage. It's all courtship.

I think my goal is to find a way to spend all of my time writing. I mean, sort of; true success is I'm doing nothing but writing if I do my job correctly.

There have been plenty of things that I've written that other people haven't cared about, but it hasn't stopped me from being a writer. So, I don't even think about other people. I'm just interested writing about human beings so if somebody calls and says, 'We'd like you to do it,' I'd say, 'That sounds like a cool idea.'

The good thing about being a writer is that you don't need anything except for a laptop. You can really do your own work, and if you're not manically compelled to write all the time before you do it professionally, it's probably not a business for you, anyway.

You don't market-research a novel; you really are writing it for yourself. It's a hobby, in many ways. The problem becomes what you do when you're confronted by criticism. You just don't listen to it.

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow - whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don't show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.

I'm writing for the sake of writing music. Whether it gets heard or not isn't an issue for me. It keeps my own juices going and my mind active.

There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.

In the end I write the novels I need to write when I need to write them.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

I'm really open to just about anything but I think the real dream is to be able to write my own thing.

Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.

There's only one good reason to be a writer-we can't help it! We'd all like to be rich, famous and successful, but if those are our goals, we're off on a wrong foot...I just wanted to earn enough money so I could work at home on my writing.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

If you don't compromise your gift, if you write each day as well as you can, and then submit your work and not worry about it and go on to the next piece, you suddenly find oddly enough that you're no more interested in the applause than the silence. You don't hear either one of them. You can never listen to the naysayers. If you do you won't survive.

There's nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it.

The best thing about being an artist, instead of a madman or someone who writes letters to the editor, is that you get to engage in satisfying work. Even if you never publish a word, you have something important to pour yourself into.

I would like to sit and and write some acoustic stuff. That's what I want to do. It means creatively, that's what I want so I need to do that for myself and then I'll see.

It's been hard for me to not write, and that's the only process I can speak to I guess, it's so compulsive and I need to do it all the time that sometimes I make myself not do it so I can actually tend to my life.

We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.