A Quote by Paul Harding

If you want to be a writer, you write. Everybody wants to get published. You gotta play your long game. — © Paul Harding
If you want to be a writer, you write. Everybody wants to get published. You gotta play your long game.
There comes a point in the game where you gotta make a play or you gotta do something to get your team over the hump, and when that time comes you gotta be able to do it.
Everybody wants to have a goal - I gotta get to that goal, I gotta get to that goal, I gotta get to that goal. I can finally get to that goal. Then you get to that goal, and then you gotta get to another goal. But in between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed - and if you don't, you're a fool.
Nobody wants to play bad football in a game; everybody wants to win, and every player wants to show how good he is. But, you know, sometimes you simply have a game where nothing is happening.
When you play in the NBA, everybody wants to play in the All-Star Game. I really want to.
You gotta be the right size, height, speed - all those are a big factor in what position you play. If you love the game, play the position you love. Some positions get paid more, but at the end of the day you gotta play the game you love.
Everybody could use the money, but you don't play for it - you play with your heart - and that's a big difference you see in Barcelona. Everybody wants to play there; everybody wants to enjoy themselves. It's maybe a small percentage, but maybe it's the difference.
I don't like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I'm from New York. I will kill to get what I need.
Once you really understand your role... that's why I think actors get lost in a series. Everybody wants to be the quarterback or the game-winning wide receiver. I've been around long enough and done enough stuff to where I don't feel that way. I just want to do what I do as well as possible.
The nightmare of censorship has always cast a shadow over my thoughts. Both under the previous state and under the Islamic state, I have said again and again that, when there is an apparatus for censorship that filters all writing, an apparatus comes into being in every writer's mind that says: "Don't write this, they won't allow it to be published." But the true writer must ignore these murmurings. The true writer must write. In the end, it will be published one day, on the condition that the writer writes the truth and does not dissemble.
Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there's a big difference between being a writer and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at the typewriter. You've got to want to write, I say to them, not want to be a writer. The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune, there are thousands more whose longing is never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty. I did.
I decided that I want to live the rest of my life happy with what I'm doing. So when I play tennis again, I have to play it for the right reason. I don't want to play to get my No. 1 ranking back. I don't want to play for the attention, or to earn more. I don't even want to play because the world wants to see me do it, even though it's nice to know that the world is interested. I only want to play because I love the game, which is the reason I began to play at age seven in the first place.
I'm kind of at the mercy of writers out there. I need a writer out there who wants to write a vehicle for me. Do it and get it to me immediately. I do want to be a lead. I want to play a lead role in a movie.
Being a writer, writing for a living, is one long persistence game. Everyone wants you to quit. Quite often, you want to quit. You get kicked down. You come up swinging. You keep going. Either you are committed to it, or you aren't.
When you play defense what happens is everybody pays attention and they start talking about how you're the stopper, you can stop this guy. All of a sudden your game gets better on the offensive end and you become that versatile guard that everybody wants.
When you're young, your perception of what it means to be a writer is often less about the writing and more about what seems to be the accompanying life: speeches and travel and hanging out with other writers. You think that when you get published, your life will clarify itself to you somehow. But when you don't get published until you're middle-aged you know who you are already, and your life expands to make room for your writing, rather than orbiting around it. You realize that there's no one way to be a writer, and that the job is less of an identity and more of a vocation.
'Made it as a writer'? I'm still wondering if I've made it as a writer. I've made it as a published writer of the type of SF that I want to write and read, but I'm still waiting for that big breakthrough.
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