Writer Quotes

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

If you want to conquer fear, don't sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.

Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.

Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement. I will not try it. Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.

In all my study of history, I have never found a time or place I would rather have lived than now.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations. But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war.

I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.

I listen to music constantly while writing.

I have lived in the only decades I could have lived in, and hope to live through at least a few more.

I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classes, but I really didn't expect it to be a career because I didn't believe there was a way to make money as a playwright without being lucky and I didn't feel particularly lucky.

I buy way too many books.

I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt.

Everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.

But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.

As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times.

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

The best thing about my job, though, is stopping at the end of the day and rejoining the human universe.

My college training was primarily in theatre, with an eye to becoming a director, actor, or producer.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people.

The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell.

The education that prepared me was my general education classes, which I tried to avoid when I was a stupid undergraduate, but which gave me the foundation of general knowledge that makes a career as a writer possible.

You who speak languages, you are such liars.

One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.