“When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf-life in some corner on an out-of-the-way library somehwere in Reykjavik, Valladolid or Vancouver.”

Source: A Tale of Love and Darkness

Last update Sept. 30, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are n…" by Amos Oz?
Amos Oz photo
Amos Oz 12
Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual 1939–2018

Related quotes

Carole Morin photo

“The relationship between reader and writer in fiction is steeped in vulnerabilities. It really does require trust and faith because some books have the power to transform people. You feel like you can never go back, look at the world in the same way again. And that grand ambition is what I hope to do with my books because at the heart of my writing is a passion for telling stories of the oppressed, the marginalized, and the misunderstood.”

Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979) contemporary Australian writer of novels for young adults

On being a writer in “Both Freedom and Constraint: An Interview with Randa Abdel-Fattah” https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/both-freedom-and-constraint-an-interview-with in Words Without Borders (May 2015)

Haruki Murakami photo
Douglas Coupland photo
José Saramago photo

“A writer is a man like any other: he dreams. And my dream was to be able to say of this book, when I finished: 'This is a book about Alentejo.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Quoted in José Saramago: il bagaglio dello scrittore‎, page 41, by Giulia Lanciani, published by Bulzoni, 1996 ISBN 8871199332, 9788871199337 (256 pages).

Nelson Algren photo

“I've always felt strongly that a writer shouldn't be engaged with other writers, or with people who make books, or even with people who read them. I think the farther away you get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources.”

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

"The Art of Fiction No. 11" (1955)
Context: I don't know many writers. [... ] Well, I dunno, but I do have the feeling that other writers can't help you with writing. I've gone to writers' conferences and writers' sessions and writers' clinics, and the more I see of them, the more I'm sure it's the wrong direction. It isn't the place where you learn to write. I've always felt strongly that a writer shouldn't be engaged with other writers, or with people who make books, or even with people who read them. I think the farther away you get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources. I mean, a writer doesn't really live, he observes.

Cassandra Clare photo

“I want my people to be protected, strong, and not to be driven into corners until they either become killers or are killed!”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

Henry Rollins photo

“People are best on records and books because you can turn them off or put them back on the shelf.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

“This is a book by a writer who does some teaching, not a book by a teacher who does some writing, and one of the satisfactions of the craft is that there's always something new to learn.”

William Zinsser (1922–2015) writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor

Introduction, p. viii.
On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976)

Related topics