Humor Writing Money Quotes

I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money. ~ Dorothy Parker

You know how some people will say to writers, "Why don't you just write a romance novel that sells a bunch of copies and then you'll have the money to do the kind of writing you want to do"? I always say that I don't have the skills or knowledge to do that. It would be just as hard for me to do that kind of writing as it would be to learn how to do any number of productive careers that I can't manage to make myself do. ~ Lucy Corin

I stayed with him for three days, and he then asked: 'Do you know any craft by which to make your living?' I told him: 'I am a lawyer, a scientist, a scribe, a mathematician and a calligrapher.' 'There is no market for that kind of thing here,' he replied. 'No one in this city has any knowledge of science or of writing and their only concern is making money.' 'By God,' I said, 'I know nothing apart from what I have told you. ~ Anonymous

How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be 'and,' 'the,' and 'I,' and 'it,' and so on, and there's a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has been done for you. ~ Terry Pratchett

My assumption when I began writing was that you were never going to make any money. And you were never going to reach everyone. Therefore you had to do as much as you could in the service of something you genuinely believed in. And if you do that and people get upset, well, there you go. ~ Dorothy Allison

I feel that I am writing out of a full life. I am a rich man, rich in men known, in adventures had. I am rich with living. ~ Sherwood Anderson

The trouble with real life is that you don't know whether you're the hero or just some nice chap who gets bumped off in chapter five to show what a rotter the villain is without anyone minding too much. ~ Sarah Caudwell

Don't worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life. ~ Michael Morpurgo

Writing is like making love, editing is like giving your great grandfather a sponge bath. ~ Midnight Taylor

Write letters to your grandmother. She will love it. And leave you money in her will. ~ Philip Gulley

My Aunt Dahlia, who runs a woman's paper called Milady's Boudoir, had recently backed me into a corner and made me promise to write her a few words for her "Husbands and Brothers" page on "What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing". I believe in encouraging aunts, when deserving; and, as there are many worse eggs than her knocking about the metrop, I had consented blithely. But I give you my honest word that if I had had the foggiest notion of what I was letting myself in for, not even a nephew's devotion would have kept me from giving her the raspberry. A deuce of a job it had been, taxing the physique to the utmost. I don't wonder now that all these author blokes have bald heads and faces like birds who have suffered. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I suppose it was the worst book any man has ever written. It was a colossal tome and faulty from start to finish. But it was my first book and I was in love with it. If I had had the money, as Gide had, I would have published it at my own expense. If I had had the courage that Whitman had, I would have peddled it from door to door. Everybody I showed it to said it was terrible. I was urged to give up the idea of writing. I had to learn, as Balzac did, that one must write volumes before signing one's own name. I had to learn, as I soon did, that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must write and write and write, even if everybody in the world advises you against it, even if nobody believes in you. Perhaps one does it just because nobody believes; perhaps the real secret lies in making people believe. That the book was inadequate, faulty, bad, terrible, as they said, was only natural. ~ Henry Miller

What would his friends think? The Honorable Hatlee Beech, federal judge, writing prose like a faggot, extorting money out of innocent people. ~ John Grisham

It's interesting, once I have convinced people that, yes, I have a sister with a mental disability, the retard jokes really dry up, so I'm not sure how much retard humor is really going on out there, but I imagine there's a lot because it's a pretty safe group to make fun of. It's not like the Retards of America are gonna rise up and organize a protest. They're not gonna write letters. They only just recently got the Supreme Court to stop executing them. ~ Bonnie McFarlane

The problem with taxation is that authors can't write off whiskey as a business expense. ~ Bryan Way

Cynics are simply thwarted romantics. ~ William Goldman

The quality of writing attracts me to films, also who the other actors are, who the director is, where it's being shot. Any or all of those things. But if the writing is really appalling, then the money had better be really good. Sometimes you say yes to something you wouldn't always do because you need the money. ~ Charles Dance

Writing is a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it. ~ John Green

Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half of a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess. ~ Howard Mittelmark

Nothing's a better cure for writer's block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton. ~ Don Roff

Fame, money and the size of the market are not very important to me. What is, is writing a book that is worth doing and then publishing it. I don't write books for entertainment, for people to pass the time then throw away. ~ Aidan Chambers

The truth is that all this was just part of the suicide process. Because tanning and steroids are only a problem if you plan to live a long time.
Because the only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.
If a tress falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn't it just lie there and rot?
And if Christ had died from a barbiturate overdose, alone on the bathroom floor, would He be in Heaven This wasn't a question of whether I was going to kill myself. This, this effort, this money and time, the writing team, the drugs, the diet, the agent, the flights of stairs going up to nowhere, all this was so I could off myself with everyone's full attention. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. ~ Mayer Amschel Rothschild

Show me you care about our common tongue. Bring to your [writing] passion, deeply informed by knowledge of your subject. Stay me, not with apples and flagons, but with wit and grace, humor and intense caring about your discipline. Don't slack, don't give it a lick and a promise, don't make it evident that you posted what was 'good enough for government work,' don't try and fake it. Give it your best, your all, not for pence, but for the love of the craft.
Do these things, as these writers and scores I have not named do, bring to your work your self, your heart, your voice, motherly or youthful, lawyerly or priestly, conservative or liberal, it matters not. Do this and I and hundreds of others will return again and again to your work, not merely because we may have a burning need for a new printer or an abiding interest in college newspapers or what have you, but because we wish to spend time with your mind and voice. ~ Markham Shaw Pyle

Like Flannery O'Connor, McCorkle's genius is to give us both philosophical speculation and a riveting narrative filled with unforgettable characters. Great writing, poignancy, humor, wisdom-all are in abundance here. Jill McCorkle is one of the South's greatest writers; she is also one of America's. ~ Ron Rash

You come out of your MFA program with a cogent clutch of stories, trying to get an agent interested, and she or he admits these are quality, sure, but this agent actually needs something the publisher can make money on. So you get kind of bullied by the market into writing a novel. ~ Stephen Graham Jones

Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés. ~ Alan Bennett

The world requires me to re-write its wretched dialogue! ~ Richard Greenberg

The night before a deadline, I usually am in desperate need of a back rub. And new wrists. And candy. And little mice to secretly finish the job while I am sleeping. ~ Christy Hall

Poetic license is not a license to scribe recklessly. ~ C. Kennedy

La dernière chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la première. (The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.) ~ Blaise Pascal

Another reason Hawthorne set his story in the past (in lies) was 'cause he couldn't say directly all the wild things he wanted to say. He was living in a society to which ideas and writing still mattered. In 'The Custom House', the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne makes sure he tells us the story of The Scarlet Letter occurred long ago and has nothing to do with anyone who's now living. After all, Hawthorne had to protect himself so he could keep writing. Right now I can speak as directly as I want 'cause no one gives a shit about writing and ideas, all anyone cares about is money. Even if one person in Boise, Idaho, gave half-a-shit, the only book Mr Idaho can get his hands on is a book the publishers, or rather the advertisers ('cause all businessmen are now advertisers) have decided will net half-a-million in movie and/or TV rights. A book that can be advertised. Define culture that way. ~ Kathy Acker

A romance is never just a romance, there's adventure, mystery and movement.

You need a grand, dramatic setting - the Swiss Alps were always an personal favourite of mine - and a chance meeting, on a train, a cruise, or perhaps the hero and heroine find themselves shipwrecked on a desert island.

The men are normally rich, well-to-do - but never vulgar with their money. Young men lack the maturity to take control so an older man is essential to provide the reassurance the heroine's needs.

There's always a fair amount of turbulence before he sweeps in to save the day. A happy ending is an absolute must. ~ Ida Pollock

Some say writing is its own reward. I write for money, but writing for money is not so bad, especially when that writing brings you joy. ~ Eloisa James

My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer? ~ Joyce Maynard

They may well have had a backup system, but if it crashed at the same time as their main system, then that's all she wrote,' Riker said. 'Excuse mee, sir' said Data. 'That's all who wrote?' 'It's merely an expression, Mr. Data,' said Picard. 'It means that was the end of it. There was nothing they could do.' 'That's all she wrote' repeated Data. He nodded. 'Yes, I see. She, in this case, doubtless referring to the human conceptualization of Fate, writing a final chapter, as it were, and putting a period to the-' 'Please, Mr. Data,' Picard said impatiently. ~ Simon Hawke

While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism. ~ Tiffany Madison

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

I have this one nasty habit. Makes me hard to live with. I write ...
... writing is antisocial. It's as solitary as masturbation. Disturb a writer when he is in the throes of creation and he is likely to turn and bite right to the bone ... and not even know that he's doing it. As writers' wives and husbands often learn to their horror ...
... there is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured. In a household with more than one person, of which one is a writer, the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private, and where food can be poked in to him with a stick. Because, if you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears or become violent. Or he may not hear you at all ... and, if you shake him at this stage, he bites ... ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Albom with Trent Willmon is the first project that I haven't had to scrap money together for. The is the first time I've used any outside songs at all; until now it's only been stuff that I've written. This is also the first album of mine that's had any co-writes on it, as well. It's a big step, coming off of anything we've ever done before. ~ Curtis Grimes

We need to reshape the movement as one of grassroots activists, and not 'professional activists' who populate the seemingly endless number of national animal rights groups. For many people, activism has become writing a check to a national group that is very pleased to have you leave it to them. Although it is important to give financial support to worthy efforts only, giving money is not enough and giving to the wrong groups can actually do more harm than good. ~ Gary L. Francione

You cherry-pick events that are relevant to the story question and construct a gauntlet of challenge (read: the plot) that will force the protagonist to put his money where his mouth is. Think baptism by ever-escalating fire. ~ Lisa Cron

The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready. ~ Steve Martin

Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Thought for the day: Twitter ... 140 character limit ... must be a great tool for fortune cookie writers ... ~ E.A. Bucchianeri