If the work is poor, the public taste will soon do it justice. And the author, reaping neither glory nor fortune, will learn by hard experience how to correct his mistakes.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
Many writers are afraid of writing something bad, so they don't try or give up when their efforts don't lead to a masterpiece right away. If you work at it, you will improve.
It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.
I am a writer, and the duty of a writer is not only to furnish pleasant pursuits for the mind and taste: he will be held accountable if things useful to the soul are not disseminated by his works and if nothing remains after him as a precept for mankind.
A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.
Being a writer is a poverty trap. I mean, it's a terrible profession.
Being rewarded for anything other than the quality of their work is the fastest way to screw-up a writer-and it isn't only new ones who suffer from that.
Let authors write for glory and reward. The truth is well paid when she is sung and heard.
If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.