“There's only one good reason to be a writer-we can't help it! We'd all like to be rich, famous and successful, but if those are our goals, we're off on a wrong foot… I just wanted to earn enough money so I could work at home on my writing.”

— Phyllis A. Whitney

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Phyllis A. Whitney 3

American writer 1903–2008

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“(A) writer, a man I loved and he loved me and we got married and it was great and is still great. He believed I could do anything, just as my parents had believed all those years ago, and I started to write fiction and that took off fine. And he loved Ireland, and the fax was invented so we writers could live anywhere we liked, instead of living in London near publishers.”

Maeve Binchy (1940–2012) Irish novelist

On Gordon Snell, her husband. irishtimes.com http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/0731/1224321158054.html

“If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

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Many Long Years Ago (1945)
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“A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame. I don't really like to say this because it never sounds sincere, but I would really have liked for my books to have been published after my death, so I wouldn't have to go through all this business of fame and being a great writer. In my case, the only advantage to fame is that I have been able to give it a political use. Otherwise, it is quite uncomfortable. The problem is that you're famous for twenty-four hours a day, and you can't say, "Okay, I won't be famous until tomorrow," or press a button and say, "I won't be famous here or now."”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 337

“I'm a writer and this is what I love to do. There's no reason that just because you're a celebrity, you can't write.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

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“I set another goal … a reasonable, manageable goal that I could realistically achieve if I worked hard enough. I approached everything step by step.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

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“My advice is to get a good agent and a good tax accountant if you ever make any money, and remember, you can't eat fame. And you can't write unless you want to write, and you can't want to unless you feel like it.”

William S. Burroughs book The Adding Machine: Collected Essays

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“The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.”

Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer

“Little miss dismissed can't miss like a detuned radio

I cannot believe you when you tell me what you know

And nothing will be broken if your house is made of stone

But you know as I do it will never be a home

We want it, they got it

They claim we'll die without it

But something tells me they are wrong

So what will you do when they call your name and you're not ready to go?

Everyone will stare at you and tell you what you know

That you're in too deep and you can't quite keep your secrets, one and all

We might just make it after all, on our own

We might just make it after all

But we had one foot on the gas and one foot in the grave

Everyone was laughing when we said we had it made”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"One Foot on the Gas, One Foot in the Grave" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/04/

“I was called a formalist, and in East Germany that meant you could be denied a chance to exhibit. So I knew I had to leave [to West-Germany], not because I was worried about the controversy but because I knew the controversy was about a bad picture. It wasn't good enough to be controversial. I was getting all the wrong reactions. Friends said the work was wonderful, and the attacks made it seem more important than it was. I had started to earn money with the murals. I earned enough to get a car. That was a big deal. So it was not easy to give up. But I knew I had to leave.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

“SHELLEY JACKSON: You began as a writer, moved to performance art, then architecture. I’d like to follow the traces of writing through your career, and see whether your late work could be rethought as a radically materialist practice of writing. What made you want to write?
VITO ACCONCI: I wanted to be involved with the making of some kind of parallel world. I thought, there’s no reason to go to different parts of our world, because you can write them. You can stay home, stay in a little room, and imagine all these worlds. And I wanted to do that. Why did I want to do that, I’m not sure if I can tell.”

Vito Acconci (1940–2017) Designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist

Shelley Jackson talks with Vito Acconci http://www.believermag.com/issues/200612/?read=interview_acconci, in: The Believer, Nr. 12. 2006.

“There's only one good reason to be a writer-we can't help it! We'd all like to be rich, famous and successful, but if those are our goals, we're off on a wrong foot… I just wanted to earn enough money so I could work at home on my writing.”

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