Writer Quotes

My parents were horrified when I told them I wanted to be an author.

My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.

My concern is how we learn to be genuine human beings.

Most of my books have been written in the form of fantasy.

King Arthur was one of my heroes - I played with a trash can lid for a knightly shield and my uncle's cane for the sword Excalibur.

It was 1943. The U.S. had already entered World War II, so I decided to join the army.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

I loved all the world's mythologies.

I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.

Eventually, I was sent to Wales and Germany, and after the war, to Paris.

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.

After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.

After I saved some money, I quit work and went to a local college.

Gossip is nature's telephone.

A bachelor is a man who comes to work each morning from a different direction.

The rich swell up with pride, the poor from hunger.

No matter how bad things get you got to go on living, even if it kills you.

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.

Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.

Keep violence in the mind where it belongs.

It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating one's own creativity - that's a much tougher matter.

I can't help believing that these things that come from the subconscious mind have a sort of truth to them. It may not be a scientific truth, but it's psychological truth.

I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.

Feedback is a pleasant thing. I get a lot of letters from unexpected people in unexpected places.

Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.

Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts.

Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill.

I don't know about Heaven or Hell, but I do know that we are visited all the time by the spirits of those who affected us in life.

Got an hour or two? That's all it takes for one of my books.