Ed McBain Quotes
Quotes to Explore
-
All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.
-
I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all.
-
Peter Sellers was just a brilliant actor, and also comedic.
-
I like writing about biology, not doing it.
-
I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.
-
I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.
-
I'm no actor, and I've got 64 pictures to prove it.
-
Musical types tend to combine the burden of the author with the burden of the actor.
-
Every actor wants more offers, but I get enough and I do like to be busy.
-
The fault lines are shifting from the boundaries of nations into the web of our societies and the streets of our cities. And, terrorism and extremism are a global force that are larger than their changing names, groups, territories and targets.
-
I did not go to any creative writing workshop; I did not major in literature. If I can write, anyone can write. All it needs is imagination.
-
All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.
-
I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.
-
With writing, I love doing it, but there's that love-hate relationship: You're not having a good run, you've hit a wall; it's frustrating.
-
People say I'm not good at writing about men. My dad left when I was 16. Give me a break. I'm doing the best I can.
-
I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.
-
I have no desire to write fiction. I did what I did, and it's done. There's more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date.
-
I always try and make people feel that they are strong enough to say something - anything, to anyone - even if it's a stranger or they're just writing a tweet if they're in danger.
-
Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young, my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it, but I loved it.
-
It's funny, we started writing chick-lit when it was just becoming a crowded marketplace, and now the same thing is happening with YA. It really used to just be one shelf at the library - Nancy Drew and Judy Blume.
-
Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
-
One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.
-
Whatever the offense dictates to allow me doing what I or this offense needs to do to win games, I'm going to do it.
-
Changing writing styles is like an actor taking on a different part.
