Joanne Rowling Quotes

Often, you have to fail as a writer before you write that bestselling novel or ground-breaking memoir. If you're failing as a writer - which it definitely feels like when you're struggling to write regularly or can't seem to earn a living as a freelance writer - maybe you need to take a long-term perspective.

Joanne Rowling

• Long
• Writing
• Struggle
• Perspective

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Quotes to Explore

• When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.

  

  Gabrielle Zevin
  • Writing
  • School
  • Present

• We live in a fast-paced culture where we're asked to make snap decisions all day long, so I suppose cash-point donations feed into the immediacy of our life experience. So it's a great idea. But I think it needs careful handling.

  

  Tamsin Greig
  • Life
  • Great
  • Long

• Writing 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars' was a fun exercise in mixing just the right amount of the Bard with just the right amount of everyone's favorite galaxy far, far away.

  

  Ian Doescher
  • Writing
  • Fun
  • Star

• We have a structural problem because you can simultaneously understand the medium to long-term risks of climate change and also come to the conclusion that it is in your short-term economic interest to invest in oil and gas. Which is why, you know, anybody who tells you that the market is going to fix this on its own is lying to you.

  

  Naomi Klein
  • Long
  • Why
  • Change

• I don't know how old I was when I started writing books. But, I was born in 1931, and I wrote my first book in 1961.

  

  Ed Emberley
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Know

• Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Writing
  • Learn
  • Start

• When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Doing

• It was failing part of my Ph.D. that led me into novel-writing. By then I was 29, had remarried and had a second baby. It struck me that I'd lost my path in life and I felt frustrated. That's when I started to write.

  

  Kate Atkinson
  • Life
  • Writing
  • Lost

• I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.

  

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • People
  • Writing
  • Political

• The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

  

  Walter Savage Landor
  • Writing
  • Wise
  • Riches

• I'm basically a know-it-all, and I'm writing a book about it. I want it to be called 'Danson on Water' and have me on the cover in this Christlike pose, standing on the water.

  

  Ted Danson
  • Want
  • Water
  • Basically

• If your writing collides with the conventional wisdom, there's going to be some kind of friction.

  

  Pankaj Mishra
  • Writing
  • Kind
  • Wisdom

• Many may look at me and see mostly what I have lost. I struggle to speak, my eyesight's not great, my right arm and leg are paralyzed, and I left a job I loved representing southern Arizona in Congress.

  

  Gabrielle Giffords
  • Great
  • May
  • Job

• Even though my dad was a manager in the minor leagues, I still traveled around with him and saw it from the field out. Now, as an owner, you're kind of looking from the whole baseball activity from outside in, from a fan's perspective.

  

  Cal Ripken, Jr.
  • Dad
  • Kind
  • Baseball

• When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.

  

  Paolo Bacigalupi
  • World
  • Writing
  • Girl

• I had casually rented an apartment that cost $75 a month because I expected my writing to pay my way.

  

  A. E. van Vogt
  • Writing
  • Way
  • Month

• I love writing songs. I love doing my radio show and talking to the fans and listening to what they have to say, but there's a certain responsibility that comes along with being given the gift of music. I take that seriously, but at the same time I try to use it to do something that makes a difference in a positive way.

  

  Randy Owen
  • Time
  • Music
  • Writing

• Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

  

  Flannery O'Connor
  • Writing
  • Experience
  • Hair

• My favorite films, I would put my answering machine up to the television set and hit record. I'd tape my favorite movies and then I could go back and listen to them again. I only had the soundtrack, I didn't have the visuals. But I think it made me really pay attention to the soundtracks.

  

  Mark Mothersbaugh
  • Up
  • Attention

• My therapy has come from paying attention to my life.

  

  Oprah Winfrey
  • Life
  • Attention
  • My Life

• If I see something new, I'd be like, 'Ooh, I want to do that.' The hunger to learn and do better never goes. Your mind is always working. You want to do so many creative things.

  

  Madhuri Dixit
  • Mind
  • Creative
  • Hunger

• I think that the question is very clear-cut, not only as a matter of ethics, but also as a matter of law, that a lawyer should not be aiding and abetting in a fraudulent scheme, and part of that aiding and abetting would be to draw up subsequent documents in order to conceal the true nature of the scheme from federal investigators.

  

  Viet D. Dinh
  • Up
  • True
  • Nature

• You should never be put into a mold based on your gender.

  

  Grace Martine Tandon

• Often, you have to fail as a writer before you write that bestselling novel or ground-breaking memoir. If you're failing as a writer - which it definitely feels like when you're struggling to write regularly or can't seem to earn a living as a freelance writer - maybe you need to take a long-term perspective.

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • Long
  • Writing
  • Struggle