Image via Wikipedia
Wouldn’t it be terrible if you’d spent all your life doing everything you were supposed to do, didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t eat things, took lots of exercise, all the things you didn’t want to do, and suddenly one day you were run over by a big red bus, and as the wheels were crunching into you you’d say ‘Oh my god, I could have got so drunk last night!’ That’s the way you should live your life, as if tomorrow you’ll be run over by a big red bus.
Image by jeanbaptisteparis via Flickr
I was once having dinner with an international group, and an American was complaining about the price of books in France. ‘Yes,’ said a Frenchman. ‘We have this silly theory in France that our authors should be able to eat. We don’t know what the future of publishing is, but we know that the future for every writer requires food. And we know that one way to help writers eat is to encourage people to buy good books.’
— Tom Lutz in the LA Review of Books
Ideas may drift into other minds, but they do not drift my way. I have to go and fetch them. I know no work manual or mental to equal the appalling heart-breaking anguish of fetching an idea from nowhere.
Writers need to focus on the one thing that they do have control over: entertaining their readers. (…) My advice: be entertaining. You might not win any awards. You might get crummy reviews. The literati will despise you, your peers will vilify you, and many folks will dedicate themselves to knocking you down. But trust me – an email from Jane Average in Oregon who named her cat after your main character means more than any of the above accolades I’ve mentioned. Because that is a goal you did reach. You entertained somebody.
Write the best book you possibly can, then dedicate yourself to getting people to read it.
— J.A. Konrath
Related articles
- Quote me. (enlightenedbean.wordpress.com)
- Los Angeles Review of Books picks up axed LAT writers (laobserved.com)
- Writing quote of the day (westernthm.wordpress.com)
- Quoting A Writer Quoting Writers . . . (nfaa.wordpress.com)
- Quote Unquote | Celebrities Attempt to Discuss Scents (stylelist.com)
- Neil Gaiman quote on libraries (schoollibraryjournal.com)
- Quote from Aristotle (tusharbhatnagar.wordpress.com)
- Quote Me Wednesdays (eventuallyco.com)
Turn the Page 