A Quote by Amanda Foreman

Despite the ever-increasing financial pressures experienced by writers and the ever-decreasing space afforded by the media to books, writers are still willing to aim for quality and to take risks.
That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.
We all know of course, that we should never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever fiddle around in any way with electrical equipment. NEVER.
Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the 'ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome'. You must be willing to fire.
Few writers in history have ever been 'politically correct' (a notion that rapidly changes in any case), and there's no reason to imagine that gay writers will ever suit their readers, especially since that readership is splintered into ghettos within ghettos.
Fiction is more dangerous than nonfiction because it can seduce better. I think we all know this, know that deeper truths can be approached in fiction than in fact. There are risks for the reader, because after reading certain books you find you have changed irreversibly. There are risks for writers: in China, now, and Ethiopia and other countries right now, writers face real persecution.
It was actually the movie 'Rushmore' that made me first realize that I could try writing, but 'Cheers' is the best show ever. The writers on that show created a relationship that writers today still fail to rip off successfully: the Sam and Diane.
I've met writers who wanted to be writers from the age of six, but I certainly had no feelings like that. It was only in the Philippines when I was about 15 that I started reading books by very contemporary writers of the Beatnik generation.
There's a double standard between writers and readers. Readers can be unfaithful to writers anytime they like, but writers must never ever be unfaithful to the readers.
I try really hard to ask people to take a look at their bookshelves. Are there female writers on it? Gay writers? Writers of color? There should be.
The trouble is that the risks that are being hedged very well by new financial securities are financial risks. And it appears to me that the real things you want to hedge are real risks, for example, risks in innovation. The fact is that you'd like companies to be able to take bigger chances. Presumably one obstacle to successful R&D, particularly when the costs are large, are the risks involved.
Everybody says, TV is great, the writer has so much power. I'm still trying to convince myself that's true. When do the writers ever have power? Ever? They don't. Even in the book industry.
Readers and writers are united in their need for solitude, in their pursuit of substance in a time of ever-increasing evanescence: in their reach inward, via print, for a way out of loneliness.
Let's stop reflexively comparing Chinese writers to Chinese writers, Indian writers to Indian writers, black writers to black writers. Let's focus on the writing itself: the characters, the language, the narrative style.
I don't believe that fiction is dead. I know there are some people who believe that it's an outdated art form, and that to express truth today you need to work in different forms, to write books where it's perhaps not clear what's fiction and what's memoir. I have nothing against those books and love many of them very much. But we have enough space for everyone, traditional realists and hybrid writers, and experimental writers all.
In the early '70s - a very good time for children's books and their authors - editors and publishers were willing to take a chance on a new writer. They were willing and able to invest their time in nurturing writers with promise, encouraging them.
Lawyers, doctors, plumbers, they all made the money. Writers? Writers starved. Writers suicided. Writers went mad.
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