J. D. Salinger Quotes

I love to write and I assure you I write regularly... But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.

I've found through experience that I'm only good when I'm writing something that, in essence, only I could write. The times I've written for hire, for other people, I don't think I've done very well.

If there is one 'scientific' discovery I am proud of, it is the discovery of the habit of writing without publication in mind.

It is not a waste to write beautiful prose or poetry for one person's eyes alone!

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.

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

I advise writing to oneself. If you don't want to read it, nobody else is going to read it.

It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write.

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

You write things that are of interest to you. There's no focus group.

I've always been the audience that I wanted to reach, so I write for myself.

To a great extent, I still write for myself, write what amuses me. Fortunately, I have a quirky sort of strange sense of humor that appeals to other people and that's good. I still sort of write for myself though there are some areas of the book I feel I have to put in and I feel I have to deliver.

An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

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

It means abandoning being a poet, abandoning your careerism, abandoning even the idea of writing any poetry, really abandoning, giving up as hopeless - abandoning the possibility of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world. Abandoning the idea of being a prophet with honor and dignity, and abandoning the glory of poetry and just settling down in the muck of your own mindYou really have to make a resolution to write for yourself, in the sense of not writing to impress yourself, but just writing what your self is saying.

It's really liberating and fun to be writing stuff for myself, and really have the freedom to say what I want to say and not really have to think about what somebody else is going to say or have to edit myself to speak from someone else's vision.

For me to write I have to be, a, alone, and b, know that nobody is going to question me. I write the way a thief steals; it's a little covert.

I write for myself, and perhaps for half a dozen friends. And that should be enough. And that might improve the quality of my writing. But if I were writing for thousands of people, then I would write what might please them. And as I know nothing about them, and maybe I'd have a rather low opinion of them, I don't think that would do any good to my work.

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

The less attention I pay to what people want and the more attention I pay to just writing the book I want to write, the better I do.

But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles.

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.

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.

You should really stay true to your own style. When I first started writing, everybody said to me, 'Your style just isn't right because you don't use the really flowery language that romances have.' My romances - compared to what's out there - are very strange, very odd, very different. And I think that's one of the reasons they're selling.

You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.