Gene Weingarten Quotes

It is my desire to be a great writer. I know that I still have a mountain to climb to achieve that.

As a writer, you have to believe you're one of the best writers in the world. To sit down every day at the typewriter filled with self-doubt is not a good idea.

If you want to be a good writer, be the best writer in the world. That's what I've done.

From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.

I thought I could write. So it was my intention to start off as a writer. But I wasn't really great at delivering the word at the end of the day.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Any good writer is going to be well-received and is going to not be well-received; that's how you know you're a great writer.

The best novel I wrote was one called 'Crusoe's Daughter,' which never won any prizes. But I was getting somewhere in that. I'm not sure I have in any of the others.

My first novel, 'The Lions of Lucerne,' just poured out of me. It was an amazing feeling of accomplishment. My biggest fear and therefore my biggest obstacle to becoming an author had been, 'What if I spend all that time and the book is no good?'

I never wanted to be a celebrity writer. I wanted to be a good writer. I'm still trying to be a good writer. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

If you want to write the next great novel, but you think, No, this won't work because no one will buy it or it won't be any good, then you talk yourself out of taking a risk.

I don't want to be famous per se, but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.

I think writing is such a great talent, and if I was better, I would love to be a writer.

People think that if you've written a book and somebody's given you a pat on the back then, you know, it's all - you're all settled, you know? You're going to be fine. I know that if I'm not confused, and really afraid, my work isn't going to be any good.

I've figured out in the course of my life that the one thing I'm good at doing is writing books, and it would be crazy to trade that in for something else.

I always wanted to write fiction. Always. As far back as I can remember it's been integral to my sense of myself - everything else was always a displacement activity.

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.

I was very afraid to write a novel - it was a dream for a very long time, and it was one of the few things that I was afraid to try.

I never wanted to be anything but a writer, and I never let go of it.

I thought I was a pretty good writer, but I didn't have anything to write about. I wanted to go out in the world, have some adventures and then write about them.

I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.

For several decades, I believed it was necessary to be extraordinary if you wanted to write, and since I wasn't, I gave up my ambition and settled down to a life of reading.

You write, hoping to write a good book; that's it.

Today I began the novel that I determined to be great.

Of course you want to be good and you want to do the best you can, but I am inspired by great writing. If there's something about the script, that's what I go for, although I know that that doesn't always translate because sometimes it's about the vision of the director.