Mary Lee Settle Quotes

• 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

  Writing, Choices, Joy

  51 Copy quote

• the first time you are reconciled to the terrible unfairness of disappointment, you are getting old.

  Mary Lee Settle

  Disappointment, Firsts, First Time

  Mary Lee Settle (1954). “The Love Eaters”

  17 Copy quote

• Recorded history is wrong. It’s wrong because the voiceless have no voice in it.

  Mary Lee Settle

  Voice, Voiceless

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Morning, Book, Dope

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Character, Thinking, Tears

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Long, People

  12 Copy quote

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

  Mary Lee Settle

  Inspiration, Fiction

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Mirrors, Hands, Age

  Mary Lee Settle (1954). “The Love Eaters”

  6 Copy quote

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