#writ

There’s a writer for you,” he said. “Knows everything and at the same time he knows nothing.” [narrator]It was my first inkling that he was a writer. And while I like writers—because if you ask a writer anything you usually get an answer—still it belittled him in my eyes. Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It’s like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying—only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#descriptions #insider #people #perceptions #writers

I've determined the ideal job for me is one where I can write clever essays about my life and my employer will give me enough money not only to live a comfortable existence, but also to buy many, many new pairs of shoes. ↗

— Jen Lancaster

#writing #humor

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on. ↗

— E.B. White

#humor #writers #writers-on-writing #writing #writing-life

People have many cruel expectations from writers. People expect novelists to live on a hill with three kids and a spouse, people expect children's story writers to never have sex, and people expect all great poets to be dead. And these are all very difficult expectations to fulfill, I think. ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#humour #writers #writers-on-writing #humor

The world requires me to re-write its wretched dialogue! ↗

— Richard Greenberg

#humor #writing #humor

All I need is a badly mangled, irate sentence stalking me. ↗

— Karen Marie Moning

#writers-world #humor

What are you going to do? "Can't say - run for president, write -" "Greenwich Village?" "Good heavens, no - I said write - not drink. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#humor #writing #humor

For me, that emotional payoff is what it’s all about. I want you to laugh or cry when you read a story...or do both at the same time. I want your heart, in other words. If you want to learn something, go to school. ↗

— Stephen King

#writing #humor

I would not employ an author to referee a Ping-Pong match. By their very nature they are biased and bloody-minded. Better put a fox in a henhouse than to ask an author to judge his peers. (in a letter to the Governor General about the GA's Literary Awards & his issue--among others--with the judging system, 1981) ↗

— Jack McClelland

#awards #humor #judging #publishers #publishing

Writing historical fiction is a legitimate use of Multiple Personality disorder. ↗

— Peggy Ullman Bell

#humor