“Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem.”
New York Times, 7 October 1962.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
John Braine 1
English novelist 1922–1986Related quotes
“A man's library is a sort of harem.”
“writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.”
“I liked being the screwer rather than the screwee.”
Source: A Fire in the Sun (1989), Chapter 20 (p. 280).
“Being a father
Is quite a bother,
But I like it, rather.”
"Soliloquy in Circles"
Versus (1949)
“Writers may be solitary but they also tend to flock together: they like being solitary together.”
Context: Writers may be solitary but they also tend to flock together: they like being solitary together. I knew a lot of writers in London and many of them were award-winning writers and many of them were award-winning, respectable writers. And the trouble with being an award-winning, respectable writer is that you probably are not making a living.
If you write one well-reviewed, well-respected, not bad selling, but not a bestseller list book every three years, which you sell for a whopping 30,000 pounds, that's still going to average out to 10,000 pounds a year and you will make more managing a McDonald's. With overtime you'd probably make more working in a McDonald's. So there were incredibly well-respected, award-winning senior writers who, to make ends meet, were writing film novelizations and TV novelizations under pen names that they were desperately embarrassed about and didn't want anybody to know about.
January magazine interview (2002)
“Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”
"Him with His Foot in His Mouth," from Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-141-18023-4], p. 11
General sources
“Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.”
Source: McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery In Ireland