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"The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day."
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"It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."

"A writer's primary goal is to make sense. The bookstore's is to make cents."

"Remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents."

"Write out of love. Your piece will finish itself."

"At the inauguration of each sentence, the writer commences with an optimistic sense of curiosity. Similar to an inquisitive explorer, a writer begins each thoughtful decree with an appreciative sense of the unknown and ends with a reverent regard for the unanswerable. Repeating this instigating act of discovery by placing a combination of sentences down on paper creates a unique verdict. The writer's compilation of pronouncements expresses their interpretation of life. Replicating this creative endeavor in the futile effort to say it all imitates the revolving mystery of life where physical reality and mysterious forces of nature operate upon humankind."

"The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd."

"Everyone assumes writers spend their time lounging around, writing and occasionally striking a pose whilst having a think."
Explore more quotes by C. S. Forester

"I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this."

"A whim, a passing mood, readily induces the novelist to move hearth and home elsewhere. He can always plead work as an excuse to get him out of the clutches of bothersome hosts."

"When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask."

"The fools ran after me and I ran after the whores, foolish though I realized such a proceeding to be."

"They managed to find time... to tell me that there was no chance of my being accepted for service and that really I should be surprised to still be alive."

"Everything was in stark and dreadful contrast with the trivial crises and counterfeit emotions of Hollywood, and I returned to England deeply moved and emotionally worn out."

"A man who writes for a living does not have to go anywhere in particular, and he could rarely afford to if he wanted."

"I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers."
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