A Quote by Mark Leyner

'Et Tu, Babe' was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer's life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing; it's my whole life.

Mark Leyner

Quote Topics

Absolute Absolute Certainty Babe Born Certainty Happy Insular Life Love Out Reading Reading And Writing Solitary Whole Whole Life Writer Writing

Quote Author

Mark Leyner
American - Author
Born: 1956

“Et Tu, Babe” was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer’s life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing, it’s my whole life.

Mark Leyner

Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he’s there, he’s not really there.

Paul Auster

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.

Cynthia Ozick

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, dont confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.

Cynthia Ozick

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

Susan Sontag

Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.

Richard Stallman

I feel like one can have all of that as a writer; you're writing, you're reading, you're talking to interesting and intelligent people. Your life is structured around whatever book you're writing, and so is your reading and so are many of your conversations.

Sheila Heti

Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.

Edna Ferber

I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.

Sarah Ruhl

Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.

Edna Ferber

Being a writer is a solitary life. So the little part of me that's an actor still enjoys the theatrical part of reading and doing the voices and telling the story.

Jeffrey Eugenides

Returning to writing fiction after 13 years away from it. Returning to the rootstock of my whole life as a writer. It's what I had wanted to be for my entire life, since I can remember, since my particular time immemorial. It's how I got my start as a writer.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Over the years, I've found that I either live life or write about it. I can't seem to do both simultaneously - I have to do it sequentially. When I write incessantly, I lose touch with the issues and passions that fuel the work. But when I get too involved in organizations or movement endeavors, I almost forget that I'm a writer. It's a constant struggle to find a balance between these two worlds - the solitary writing life and the life of a social justice activist.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

I'd chosen to dedicate my life to writing, and I asked myself, 'if you write your whole life, and nobody ever sees a word, is it as a writer that you die?'

Nathan Englander

It's not very fashionable, but I love life, and I believe that things disappear and reappear and nothing ever solidifies, no matter how middle-class, housebroken, staid, and solitary someone's life seems to be. That, I think, is what I'm writing about.