A Quote by Patrick O'Brian

I have never written for an audience. On the other hand I do not write merely to please myself.

Patrick O'Brian

Quote Topics

Audience Hand Merely Myself Never Other Please Write Written

Quote Author

Patrick O'Brian
English - Novelist
December 12, 1914 - January 2, 2000

Well, I hate it when authors come into a school and they say to kids, 'Write from your heart, only write what you know, and write from your heart.' I hate that because it's useless. I've written over 300 books - not one was written from my heart. Not one. They were all written for an audience, they were all written to entertain a certain audience.

R. L. Stine

I've never written specifically for children as such. I write to please myself, and if it is suitable, it gets printed as a children's book.

Ruskin Bond

I don't photograph for other people. I love an audience, mind you. Once I've got them there, then I love an audience. Not a big audience, though. I'd rather please ten people I respect than ten million I don't. But I don't play to an audience, I do it for myself.

Brett Weston

I almost never write because I want something from my audience. Almost everything I've ever written, I've written because I feel like I have to write this or I'll die. Like, this has to come out of me.

Zoe Kazan

I can't write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don't never write for myself.

Miles Davis

Believe it or not, I write on stage. I can't write anywhere else; I have to be in a moment. I also have to challenge myself to make something funny out of a premise. I never have my own jokes written. I have to change things as I go along, and I have to entertain myself.

J. B. Smoove

I've always written about other artists, or I write my thoughts down, but I've never written a story.

Laurie Simmons

Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.

Blaise Pascal

I like writing for other people. I love it. It's great because you write it and then you hand it off to someone else. But in terms of directing, anything I direct will be something I've written or re-written. I'm in no crazy rush to direct.

Nicholas Stoller

I don't ever write with a particular audience in mind. I just write books that please me.

William Landay

When I write songs I write for myself...I'm writing it as a form of expression, and hoping to find an audience, an audience that responds to music that is honest and lyrical and tells stories.

Patti Scialfa

I would like to write a novel, or at least try to write one, although my motives are not entirely pure. For one thing, I get asked about writing novels so much that I feel guilty about never having written one. And although I have no strong desire to write a novel, I would hate not to try. That would just be silly. On the other hand, I hate the idea of slogging through something that turns out to be not good.

Kelly Link

I'm not typing. I write only by longhand. I've always written first drafts by hand and then once I was into a second or third draft I wrote insert pages on a typewriter. But I got rid of all my typewriters about three or four novels ago and now I do everything by hand. I write by hand because it makes me go slow and going slow is what I like.

John Irving

I cannot write to anyone outside myself--if I tried, it would be a horrible story, flat and lifeless. I write to myself. That's the only person I'm trying to please.

Shannon Hale

WIDE, the margin between carte blanche and the white page. Nevertheless it is not in the margin that you can find me, but in the yet whiter one that separates the word-strewn sheet from the transparent, the written page from the one to be written in the infinite space where the eye turns back to the eye, and the hand to the pen, where all we write is erased, even as you write it. For the book imperceptibly takes shape within the book we will never finish. There is my desert.

Edmond Jabes

I'd never even thought about compromise when I worked in my studio. The major distinction is in the priority of who I ultimately wanted to please: myself or the audience.

Cindy Sherman

A Quote by Patrick O'Brian

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors