Richard Rohr Quotes

I want to offer a word of encouragement to authors: You have to feel called to the message of your book enough that you want people to get that message. When you get to that place, your passion goes through the roof, and then the other stuff happens.

I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me.

No book was ever written down by any but itself.

But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!

A book comes and says, 'Write me.

Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn't help you. Do it your own way. Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write.The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won't write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

For years, I was watching other people have so much fun playing out their version of authorship, like Louis C.K. and Larry David. As I watched them do their thing, I began to pine for the days when I had a lot less expected of me and, often, a lot more creative freedom. The courage that those guys have is always captivating to me.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

I discovered Einstein said the same thing about his celebrated theories of relativity that writers say about their work when he said he didn't have any feelings of personal possession of these ideas. Once they were out there, they came from somewhere else. And that's exactly the feeling when you write. You don't feel possessive about it.

I had no ghost writers for the books - I wrote every line myself.

I'm constantly creating and writing.

And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other people's flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.

Until I was about 7, I thought books were just there, like trees. When I learned that people actually wrote them, I wanted to, too, because all children aspire to inhuman feats like flying. Most people grow up to realize they can't fly. Writers are people who don't grow up to realize they can't be God.

For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me.

Like all former thinkers, I'm writing a book.

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

You write a book and it's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. You don't know if it will ever reach any shores. And there, you see, sometimes it falls in the hands of the right person.

It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.

Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.

You have to write the book that wants to be written.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.

I think the book you always like best is the one you're about to write.