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

• My highest point was the first thing I won, a short story competition in a women's magazine in the Eighties. It was the first time I'd had my writing validated, and the first thing I'd ever shown anyone else.

  

  Kate Atkinson
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Women

• We've got a long career ahead of us and it's going to be great. Trust me.

  

  Dan Hawkins
  • Great
  • Long
  • Career

• 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 don't want to name any names, but I've worked on television shows where there's a guy writing for my generation who's, like, 60 - and it doesn't work.

  

  Zachary Knighton
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Guy

• I've got a long way to go to being the ultimate best, but I think my time is now. And I'm starting to enter my prime.

  

  Kevin Durant
  • Time
  • Long

• That's the thing about 'Torchwood': It will pull the rug out from under you. It goes along being cute and campy and gay, and then, all of a sudden, it'll nail you.

  

  Lauren Ambrose
  • Gay
  • Cute

• You define a good flight by negatives: you didn't get hijacked, you didn't crash, you didn't throw up, you weren't late, you weren't nauseated by the food. So you are grateful.

  

  Paul Theroux
  • Up
  • Good
  • Food

• People wanted to put me in one category, I think because it was easier for them.

  

  Pauline Ferrand-Prevot
  • People

• 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