A Quote by Nicholson Baker

While I was writing I assumed it would be published under a pseudonym, and that liberated me: what I wrote was exactly what I wanted to read.

Nicholson Baker

Quote Topics

Assumed Exactly Exactly What Liberated Me Pseudonym Published Read Wanted While Would Would Be Writing Wrote

Quote Author

Nicholson Baker
American - Novelist
Born: January 7, 1957

I had no idea, when I was writing early on, that my poems would be published or read by anyone, never mind people I knew or would meet. I just wrote urgently - naïvely, I suppose, looking back.

Denise Duhamel

Just keep writing, and try to finish that novel. Remember, all authors started exactly where you are right now; the only difference between a published author and a non-published one is that the published author never stopped writing.

Julie Kagawa

It didn't occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret. That's how one has to write anyway--in secret.

Louise Erdrich

I'd pretty much given up hope of being published, so I just wrote the book I wanted to read.

Kate Morton

When I was a kid and wanted to grow up to be a writer, I assumed I would be writing about animals and children because that's what I cared about and read about. But I never did.

Sigrid Nunez

Before I published anything, I dreamed of publication, but I didn't actually write for it. I imagined that writing for an audience was something for fancier people. I aspired, but mostly I wrote for myself. I wrote because it made me happy.

Ariel Gore

Wormholes were first introduced to the public over a century ago in a book written by an Oxford mathematician. Perhaps realizing that adults might frown on the idea of multiply connected spaces, he wrote the book under a pseudonym and wrote it for children. His name was Charles Dodgson, his pseudonym was Lewis Carroll, and the book was Through The Looking Glass.

Michio Kaku

If I wanted to curse you out, I would write everything I wanted to say to you in my diary, and it was like screaming in my head. After that, I would have no feelings for you; I wouldn't be mad at you or upset because I already said it to you when I wrote it down. That's what writing did for me.

Claressa Shields

With the 'Hazelwood High' trilogy, I wasn't sure I was writing a trilogy. I would just write one book, then another, and then another, because the young adults who wrote me told me that they wanted to read more.

Sharon Draper

I came to nonfiction through journalism. My first book was journalism, and it was so frustrating to me, while I was writing it, that I wasn't capturing the moments the way they were when I lived them; I was filtering and re-filtering. I had to come to terms with the fact that I couldn't and shouldn't claim authenticity. Then, when the book was published and I gave readings, I'd hear myself read and it was like I was eavesdropping on a dream - even with myself as the narrator. I knew that guy but couldn't exactly recognize him.

Lucas Mann

I was 17 when I wrote a collection of short stories and wanted it published but it didn't happen. A lot of publishing houses don't allow young authors to enter into writing segments.

Kanika Dhillon

I had read [Charles] Dickens's novels were often published serially. I thought it would be fun to write a book, just sitting down and writing a chapter every day, not knowing what would happen next. So that's how I wrote the first draft. And then of course I had to go back and make sure everything worked and change things.

Lynne Rae Perkins

I once read Updike after writing a first draft, and I wanted to put my own book on the fire. I've since learned to read utter crap while I'm writing: pulp is the thing.