“Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem.”
New York Times, 7 October 1962.
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John Braine1
English novelist 1922–1986Related quotes
“A man's library is a sort of harem.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
“writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.”
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
“I liked being the screwer rather than the screwee.”
George Alec Effinger book A Fire in the Sun
Source: A Fire in the Sun (1989), Chapter 20 (p. 280).
“Being a father
Is quite a bother,
But I like it, rather.”
Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet
"Soliloquy in Circles"
Versus (1949)
“Writers may be solitary but they also tend to flock together: they like being solitary together.”
Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer
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.”
Saul Bellow book Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories
"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.”
Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist
Pete McCarthy (1951–2004) British travel writer
Source: McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery In Ireland