Jorge Luis Borges Quotes

I've found through experience that I'm only good when I'm writing something that, in essence, only I could write. The times I've written for hire, for other people, I don't think I've done very well.

If the stuff you're writing is not for yourself, it won't work.

Whenever you think you're writing what other people want to hear from you, and that it'll be commercial, you're doomed to disaster. Writing has to be as truthful and specific as we can make it. The minute we think that we're reaching more people and pleasing them, we get general. And audiences sense that and turn away, shun us.

I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

If you write for the critics, only the critics will read you.

I think writers would do better to consider that idea [to write to yourself], because you know yourself really well, and you never know your demographic fully. You only get into trouble if you try to please somebody you don't really understand.

I've always been the audience that I wanted to reach, so I write for myself.

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.

It means abandoning being a poet, abandoning your careerism, abandoning even the idea of writing any poetry, really abandoning, giving up as hopeless - abandoning the possibility of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world. Abandoning the idea of being a prophet with honor and dignity, and abandoning the glory of poetry and just settling down in the muck of your own mindYou really have to make a resolution to write for yourself, in the sense of not writing to impress yourself, but just writing what your self is saying.

I say what's in my head, and I'm on honest ground. That is worth so much, and I think it does make my job, as a writer, easier. It makes it possible for me to give people stuff that they like.

I think that's great - I just try not to be one of those people. I find the more I think about it, the less free I feel when I write and when I work.

I tended not to be concerned about whether a song was going to be a hit when I wrote it. Because it became evident that none of us knew what was a hit and what wasn't. So I thought if I just write what I like, why shouldn't people like what I like?

The less attention I pay to what people want and the more attention I pay to just writing the book I want to write, the better I do.

I don't think it matters what the frequency is of me writing or directing a movie. It doesn't really matter to anybody else. I'm just trying to put good things out there.

What I think of blogs is just this: Some are beautifully written and many are not. But even blogs that aren't necessarily "well" written are great for the person writing them.

My life is not a political campaign. I just write about what is on my mind. I just play whatever I feel like playing. Whatever is in my soul at the time is what I want to do. I have, thank god, enough people who are still interested in what I am doing so that I can go out and keep doing it.

I didn't want to do the whole, get the hottest person thing. I wanted to make sure every record felt right.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

I certainly want people to like my writing, but I know that if I write with the intention of trying to please people, the writing will not be good because it will not be authentic. So, ironically, I have to be willing to write something strange or unlovable in order to write anything truly good.

I have always tried to work according to what affects me, to a script that I like because it touches me in some way, without deliberately pursuing a commercial career or a particular image.

What's great is that starting a blog can get you lot of attention for your writing. But it doesn't have to be for anybody other than yourself.

I know that after my letter there will be undoubtedly an 'opinion' about me, but I am not afraid of it. I openly say what I think. Talent, of which we are proud, must not be submitted to the assaults of the past.

The way I choose projects is based on what I think is most real and most interesting, not on what's paying the most money or what's most popular.

You know, we have our own audience, and it's not like - they just know we're not going to do certain things.