Lawrence Block Quotes

You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else.

If I can't make the kind of film that I want to make, then the hell with it.

However, I don't feel the world is looking over my shoulder when I am working - I never think about this at all. What I think about is trying to make my work pure, and if it is pure then it can be accessible. It is quite straight forward really.

To the extent that independent means you're willing to attempt to put your own ideas, personality, and commitment to the material on screen, then of course I hope I'm independent until the day I die.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

Don't write your books for people who won't like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write, and don't try to please readers who like something different.

I think the moment you start trying to please a fan base is when you start going downhill. I'm going to always, always write about what I want, even if it doesn't necessarily cater to most of them.

I write the novels that are possible for me to write, not that ones I think will come across in a certain light.

I can only say that I myself wrote always as I wished, without a tremendous desire to find the latest thing possible.

Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It's impossible to know what others want, so don't waste time trying to guess.

You should do the sound that you want and not what others want.

The rule I stand by as an artist is definitely be yourself, and don't make music just for other people: make it for you first.

Anything you spend a long time on, of course it would be nice if everyone likes it. But I think the strength that we've got is that we always concentrate on what we want it to be like and not really trying to please other people.

We only do what we think is good and what we're happy with. I do that in stand-up, I even do it with my children's books. I don't do market research, I don't have focus groups, I don't care. I don't care if it fails, honestly. I'd rather have something that's completely mine fail than something succeed that I'm not proud of.

I have to write the story I want to write. I never wrote them with a focus group of 8-year-olds in mind. I have to continue telling the story the way I want to tell it.

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.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

If the stuff you're writing is not for yourself, it won't work.

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.

You really write the books you want to write. You can't take into consideration anything that anybody has said about you in the past, or what they'll say about you in the future.

I tended not to be concerned about whether a song was going to be a hit when I wrote it. Because it became evident that none of us knew what was a hit and what wasn't. So I thought if I just write what I like, why shouldn't people like what I like?

Do not write to impress others. Authors who write to impress people have difficulty remaining true to themselves. A better path is to write what pleases you and pray that there are others like you. Your first and most important reader is you. If you write a book that pleases you, at least you know one person will like it.

My life is not a political campaign. I just write about what is on my mind. I just play whatever I feel like playing. Whatever is in my soul at the time is what I want to do. I have, thank god, enough people who are still interested in what I am doing so that I can go out and keep doing it.

I'm certainly not who people think I am. I always do whatever I want to do, and my films are personal to me.

Write what you think is good, is the whole of the law.