Writing Failure Quotes

The worst story I ever wrote was after the conviction of Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay. My co-author and I wrote a piece for 'Fortune' saying everything's going to be different now.

My first book was so horrible I have deleted all copies of it. Thankfully, it was before the Internet, so there are no lurking caches of it anywhere.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

I always assumed I could never make a living out of literary fiction, and I was right. When I did try, it took four years before being published.

I realized that I might not ever make it as a writer, that it might be because I wasn't good enough, or that it might be because the odds were just too long.

Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.

I wrote the worst novel ever.

After college, I was living in New York and wrote furiously, a huge novel that I knew was a failure. I hoped that the book would work, but to be honest, I think I knew it would never work, even as I was finishing it.

I started pitching shows and sold a show, 'Losin It,' about my Jenny Craig days. It never was made. I think it didn't work, partially because I didn't write it.

The truth is, I wrote a novel when I was 23. It's hideously bad. Truly rotten.

My first book is called 'Carry the Three.' It's definitely in a drawer, and it's terrible. I never sent it to anybody. My wife read it, but nobody else.

My novel got published, and I became a paid writer, which was nice, and then it came out, and nobody bought it, so I became an unemployed writer again.

I did try to write in Iraq, and I failed. I think you just don't have the brain space for it.

The first novel I wrote was a monster - clocking in at 180,000 words - but it died a death, a death it deserved. It was called 'The Gods First Make Mad.' It was a good title, but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn't let that put me off.

Madly, futilely, I wrote novel after novel, eight in all, that failed to find a publisher. I persisted because for me the novel was the supreme literary form - not just one among many, not a relic of the past, but the way we communicate to one another the subtlest truths about this business of living.

I'll never be a good writer, and no chance of being a good actor.

The hard truth is that there are people who believe they're writers and work hard at it and are sincere about it, but they don't make it. You have to be prepared for that possibility.

I've never written a play before, and I'll never write one again. You can quote me.

Of the first seven novels I wrote, numbers four and five were published. Numbers one, two, three, six, and seven, have never seen the light of day... and rightly so.

I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels.

I was not a successful TV comedy writer.

If you're trying to be a successful writer, and you go into a second-hand bookshop, it's the graveyard of people whose books haven't been wanted.

It took me ten years to write a proper story. I floundered about trying to shape something, counting on the 'feeling' I had as I wrote, only to discover upon rereading my work that the feeling had disappeared, and what remained was an empty shell.

I was kind of broke. 'The Girl on the Train' was a last roll of the dice for me as a fiction writer.

The first book I sat down to write was an historical romance. It was really bad and thankfully no one ever saw it.