Top 8 Quotes by Mary Lee Settle

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.

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

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”

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

Mary Lee Settle

Voice, Voiceless

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

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

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