Authorial Humility Quotes

I was twenty-nine years old and I wasn't a very good poet and I wasn't a very good novelist, [so] I thought I would try writing a play, which seems to have worked out a little better.

I cite my vouchers to every passage and I have done my utmost, first to find out the truth, and then to relate it in the clearest order. I have laboured after accuracy; and yet I dare not say that I am without mistake; nor do I desire the reader to conceal any he may possibly find.

The writer's job is to let the books speak for themselves eventually.

All this is rather pretentious and fey to even talk about, but Flannery O'Connor sat down to write stories. The rest of us, some of us, don't have that kind of wit and genius. We don't do that. We sit down and have some accidents.

I never admit to wishing I'd written something by another author, but if my name mysteriously appeared on the title page of 'The Guns of August,' I wouldn't complain.

I write like a two-year-old, and I can't spell.

All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.

There is, I think, great difficulty in writing of one's self: it is almost impossible to present subjects where the chief actor must be conspicuous and not seem to be, or really be, egotistical.

What is extraordinary about the character of Edna - and I speak as though I am completely outside this character and I am talking to you - I'm, as it were, in the wings, and she's on stage, and every now and then she says something extremely funny, and I stand there and think: 'I wish I'd thought of that.'

I'd be the first person to say I can't write dialogue. My dialogue is very utilitarian and is designed to move things forward. I'm not Shakespeare. It's not designed to be poetic.

I feel that the task of criticizing my poetry is best left to others (i.e. critics) and would much rather have it take place after I am dead. If at all.

I attempt to write a good novel. Whether it is literature or not is something that will be decided by the ages, not by me and not by a pack of critics around the globe.

There yet remains but one concluding tale, And then this chronicle of mine is ended - Fulfilled, the duty God ordained to me, A sinner. Not without purpose did the Lord, Put me to witness much for many years, And educate me in the love of books. One day some indefatigable monk, Will find my conscientious, unsigned work; Like me, he will light up his ikon-lamp, And, shaking from the scroll the age-old dust, He will transcribe these tales in all their truth.

I'm not Cormac McCarthy, but I can get my point across in a thousand words.

I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors.

I, who am king of the matter I treat, and who owe an accounting for it to no one, do not for all that believe myself in all I write. I often hazard sallies of my mind which I mistrust.

I have found things that I could have done better in 'The Woman Warrior.' But then I thought: Let the work of one's youth just stand.

Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work.

Trust not my reading, nor my observations, Which with experimental seal do warrant The tenor of my book.

I left things out - my motivations, my history, my emotional responses - because I am not good at understanding them or writing about them. I tried and it was generally boring and always unconvincing. Most importantly I wanted to try to place Afghans and Afghanistan in the foreground rather than my own character.

I don't know if it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I'm not going to be writing about Paris in the 1800s. I feel like it would come off as just ludicrously uninformed, even if I did a lot of research.

I am not a grammarian. Maybe my style is eccentric.

I suppress in my prose any language which calls attention to itself.

Young or old, a writer sends a book into the world, not himself.

I wrote Freak the Mighty because Max, the mighty half of Freak the Mighty, insisted and he's bigger than I am.