“Being an author sucks, doesn't it? It's like telling a joke and nobody laughs for two years.”
Source: Afterworlds
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Scott Westerfeld 147
American science fiction writer 1963Related quotes

"Charles Dickens" (1939)
Context: The thing that drove Dickens forward into a form of art for which he was not really suited, and at the same time caused us to remember him, was simply the fact that he was a moralist, the consciousness of ‘having something to say’. He is always preaching a sermon, and that is the final secret of his inventiveness. For you can only create if you can care. Types like Squeers and Micawber could not have been produced by a hack writer looking for something to be funny about. A joke worth laughing at always has an idea behind it, and usually a subversive idea. Dickens is able to go on being funny because he is in revolt against authority, and authority is always there to be laughed at.
“If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.”
[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/1350738078453755909]
Tweets by year, 2021

Source: Allan Brown (August 1, 2004) "Benefits of being game for a laugh - Edinburgh Festival", The Sunday Times.

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/napoleon-dynamite-2004 of Napoleon Dynamite (18 June 2004)
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“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”