Mary Lee Settle
Anyone who has a choice and doesn't choose to write is a fool. The work is hard, the perks are few, the pay is terrible, and the product, when it's finally finished, is pure joy.Collection: Writing
the first time you are reconciled to the terrible unfairness of disappointment, you are getting old.Collection: Disappointment
Recorded history is wrong. It’s wrong because the voiceless have no voice in it.Collection: Voice
When I'm working on a serious and solid book ... I read about a detective novel a day. It's the best legal dope in the world. It makes you feel good until the next morning you can work again.Collection: Morning
Somerset Maugham said that it took at least six human beings to make one fictional character. That is true of landscape as well, I think. We have to make our landscapes, change streets, create new turnings, rebuild or tear down, change time, and even nature, if need be.Collection: Character
Don't people know that it's the hardest work in the world? Joseph Conrad said that he had loaded hundredweights of coal all day long on a ship in Amsterdam in the wintertime, and that is was nothing to the energy demanded for a day's work writing.Collection: Writing
[The inspiration that comes to authors of fiction] is not an act of intelligence.Collection: Inspiration
Having watched herself in the speckled mirror ... she was already shocked beyond surprise at what the flat hand of age could do.Collection: Mirrors