Work and Profession

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

To do great work, a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.

My experience with trying to help people to write has been limited but extremely intensive. I have done everything from giving would-be writers money to live on to plotting and rewriting their stories for them, and so far I have found it all to be a waste. The people whom God or nature intended to be writers find their own answers, and those who have to ask are impossible to help. They are merely people who want to be writers.

Someone once asked me whether I thought women artists should have children, and, since we were beyond discussing why this question is never asked of artists who are men, I gave my answer promptly. “Yes,” I said, somewhat to my surprise. And, as if to amend my rashness, I added: “They should have children— assuming this is of interest to them —but only one.” “Why only one?” this Someone wanted to know. “Because with one you can move,” I said. “With more than one you’re a sitting duck.”

Keep your bones in good motion, kid, and quietly consume and digest what is necessary. I think it is not so much important to build a literary thing as it is not to hurt things. I think it is important to be quiet and in love with park benches; solve whole areas of pain by walking across a rug .

It is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.

It is not a good thing for an artist to marry. As the ancients used to say, if you serve a Muse, you must serve her and no one else. An unhappy marriage may perhaps contribute to the development of talent, but a happy one is no good at all.

When I hear about writer’s block, this one and that one! Fuck off! Stop writing, for Christ’s sake: You’re not meant to be doing this. Plenty more where you came from.

Be regular and orderly like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Any writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals; as soon as you connect with your true subject you will write.

It would be wisest not to worry too much about the sterile periods. They ventilate the subject and instill into it the reality of daily life.

Now this is very important and can hardly be emphasized too strongly: You have decided to write at four o’clock, and at four o’clock write you must!

Very few authors are able to do actual writing for more than three hours a day. In fact, a good many very successful ones average no more than an hour.

Write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you are writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.

Get up very early and get going at once, in fact, work first and wash afterwards.

There comes a moment in the day, when you have written your pages in the morning, attended to your correspondence in the afternoon, and have nothing further to do. Then comes the hour when you are bored; that’s the time for sex.

One goes on writing partly because it is the only available way of earning a living. It is a hard way and highly competitive. My heart drops into my bowels when I enter a bookshop and see how fierce the competition is. But one pushes on because one has to pay bills.

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for the money.

Sometimes you can lick an especially hard problem by facing it always the very first thing in the morning with the very freshest part of your mind. This has so often worked with me that I have an uncanny faith in it.

There should be two main objects in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message, and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader’s attention or check his habitual pace of reading—he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic.

Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader … by either the author or the people in the tale. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate.

Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

A writer needs three things, experience, observation and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

A boy has to peddle his book.