
“I have known many people to ask for advice but very few who wanted it and none who followed it.”
The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)
Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)
Context: I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.
“I have known many people to ask for advice but very few who wanted it and none who followed it.”
The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)
“Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.”
“I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance.”
As quoted in C.S. Lewis (1963), by Roger Lancelyn Green, p. 9
"Thomas Love Peacock: The Novel of Ideas" (1980)
1980s, The Second American Revolution (1983)
Variant: In any case, write what you know will always be excellent advice to those who ought not to write at all.
Source: The Essential Gore Vidal
“Interviewer: Your advice to youngsters who want to take up the sport”
referring to cricket
Preface to Lear (1972; London: Methuen, 1983) p. lvii