“The aversion you naturally and immediately took to my writing was, for once, welcome to me.”
—Franz Kafka, on his frighteningly rigid and hard-to-please father
“I think a certain fearlessness in the face of your own ineptitude is a useful tool.”
—Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
“I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn’t want to be a writer. I wanted to be an actress. I didn’t realize then that it’s the same impulse. It’s make-believe. It’s performance.”
—Joan Didion, author of The Year of Magical Thinking
“I certainly couldn’t care less if I ever performed again, and don’t care much if I ever direct another film, but I would not be in a position not to write.”
—Woody Allen
“As a writer I learned from Charlie Chaplin.”
—Bernard Malamud
“The teacher would promise that I would tell a story. I told serials.”
—John Cheever, on how his math teacher got the other students to complete their assignments
“I don’t believe in possession, but something took over inside me, some little demon that made me a writer.”
—Truman Capote
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