Mary Lee Settle Quotes

#1. Anyone who has a choice and doesn't choose to write is a fool. The work is hard, the perks are few, the pay is terrible, and the product, when it's finally finished, is pure joy.

Mary Lee Settle

#2. [The inspiration that comes to authors of fiction] is not an act of intelligence.

Mary Lee Settle

#3. Somerset Maugham said that it took at least six human beings to make one fictional character. That is true of landscape as well, I think. We have to make our landscapes, change streets, create new turnings, rebuild or tear down, change time, and even nature, if need be.

Mary Lee Settle

#4. The first time you are reconciled to the terrible unfairness of disappointment, you are getting old.

Mary Lee Settle

#5. Recorded history is wrong. It's wrong because the voiceless have no voice in it.

Mary Lee Settle

#6. When I'm working on a serious and solid book ... I read about a detective novel a day. It's the best legal dope in the world. It makes you feel good until the next morning you can work again.

Mary Lee Settle

#7. Having watched herself in the speckled mirror ... she was already shocked beyond surprise at what the flat hand of age could do.

Mary Lee Settle

#8. Don't people know that it's the hardest work in the world? Joseph Conrad said that he had loaded hundredweights of coal all day long on a ship in Amsterdam in the wintertime, and that is was nothing to the energy demanded for a day's work writing.

Mary Lee Settle