Ezra Pound Quotes

As a writer you have a duty to be a messenger.

A writer writes. Period. No matter if someone is buying your work or not.

The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.

Even if I couldn't get my early novels published, I could still write. I went into newspapers, where I got paid to write every day. If there's a better school for would-be novelists, I don't know what it is.

I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.

I do think that part of literature's job is to comment on and participate in the social issues of the time.

You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.

I don't write for publishers, certainly not for critics, and not for readers, But I am delighted that so many people have found my books enjoyable and want to continue to read them.

Many writers can't make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I don't really know about its value to the student. I don't mean it's useless. But I wouldn't have wanted anyone to teach me how to write.

I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.

The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant.

It's a lovely feeling, just working away at the desk, putting words down, building words up... I think you have to be aware that what you're doing is not just a private act, it's a societal thing.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

There was a writer in the '20s called Christopher Morley, who I remember a little bit of, who had some influence on me, but I couldn't tell you what it was.

I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something.

The Term Paper Artist' represents two models of writing, one of the little boy bouncing his ball, generating stories for the sheer pleasure of it, and the besieged adult, writing to make a living, having to contend with a very competitive, very unreliable world in which public image counts.

My work has social implications, it functions in a social arena.

I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn't paid for what she writes.

On a more practical level, anyone out there who wants to be a writer should clearly recognize that this is a brutal business, where even incredibly talented people sometimes never make a living. If you want to chase such a dream, please have a Plan B in place.

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.

Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living.

I rebelled against the idea of the artist being what I call the 'after-dinner mint' of society. I didn't want them to be just the entertainers, but rather part of the community - the bread, not only the dessert.

Every artist wants an audience, and it's incredible to me how books take on a life of their own and reach people whom you could never meet. That's what got me interested in writing in the first place.

I wrote poems. That is my work. I am convinced... I believe that what I wrote will be useful to people not only now but in future generations.