Alfred Kazin Quotes

I write for the love of writing. If I never published another book, I would still be writing stories.

Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.

I've had a love affair with every movie I've ever done.

When you've finished a piece of work you've had a kind of love affair with it.

By the time I was 23 or 24 and had written the first manuscript of 'The Final Winter', I knew I wanted to make it a career but didn't know how. It took me a long time to grow into myself, but when my love of writing returned, it did so with an enormous amount of venom. It is now a mainstay in my life.

Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.

I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn't paid for what she writes.

I despise writing in general, but yeah, I love writing the stuff that I direct.

The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.

I don't write for the money. I write because something in me is constantly compelled.

I have always thought of myself as a writer, only because I need things to direct, and I can't not write the things that I direct.

Working on music is the funnest thing for me, and I love it, and I could do it all day, all night.

Is making a movie true love if you're a creative person? It could be. But in my world, the importance of being a father and having kids and knowing that connection is true love. Making a movie is love.

I know I can always draw, but I actually love the writing the most.

The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from, and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness.

I directed some movies in the past, and I'd still love to do that. You know, the whole thing is a labor of love, I think.

I always talk to my students about the need to write for the joy of writing. I try to sort of disaggregate the acclaim from the act of writing.

I always say to my agents, you go through one of these big kind of movies, everyone makes money, but like, I said, 'I'm the one who's gotta go make it, and if I don't have my heart in it, and it's like a love affair, I'm not going to do a good job. Then, and I don't want to just get paid. I just, I don't want to do that.'

I get to do what I love every day. I get to crawl into someone else's head and I love that.

Every film that I have done has a special place in my heart.

I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.

It doesn't matter what medium I perform, I just love to perform in general, if it's good work.

A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.

I'll always write picture books - it's just what I do. I'd even do it if I wasn't being paid.

My songs are like my children. I love every single one of them.