Ngaio Marsh
I always make a point of keeping the most pleasant-sounding name for the murderer. As he or she is bound to come to an unpleasant end, it seems the very least the author can do.
If you don't write about what you know, you're like a barrister and have to do a frightful amount of research for each case.
I always, by an involuntary act of defensiveness, return to my everyday self: so, I find, have I withdrawn from writing about experiences which have most closely concerned and disturbed me. I have been deflected by my own reticence.
Had I guessed the trouble my name was going to cause a lot of people on the other side of the world, I would have changed it to something easier when I began writing books.
I acquired quite a lot of technical skill and got quite a long way with my painting, but I never felt I was doing what New Zealand was about with my paint.
What does 'Ngaio' mean? I don't know. Like many Maori words, it has a number of meanings - clever, light on the water, a little bug - but I don't know which my parents had in mind.
You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery over words.Collection: Writing
if you go through life looking for insults, you may be comfortably assured of finding them.Collection: Insults You
You may be able to write a novel, you may not. You will never know until you have worked very hard indeed and written at least part of it. You will never really know until you have written the whole of it and submitted it for publication.Collection: Writing
No coffee is ever quite as good as it smells.Collection: Coffee
It is a curious thing that when one speaks from the heart it is invariably in the worst of taste.Collection: Heart
One should have the courage of one's loneliness.Collection: Loneliness
Expectation is the springboard of achievement.Collection: Expectations
We do not wait for inspiration. We work because we've jolly well got to. But when all is said and done, we toil at this particular job because it's turned out to be our particular job, and in a weird sort of way I suppose we may be said to like it.Collection: Jobs
As usual she had a deceptive air of perspicacity.Collection: Air
Custom makes monsters of us all.Collection: Monsters
Above all things-read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied.Collection: Writing
Why do you want to become an author? I will accept only one answer. If it is because you feel you can write better than you can do anything else then go ahead and do it without frills and flourishes. Stick to your present job and write in your spare time: but do it as if it is a whole time job.Collection: Jobs
No art should be fashionable.Collection: Art