Quotes: Being a writer
3 quotes on this theme, each with its source and insight
The quotes
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
Source: The Book of Disquietude, fragment (posthumous) · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The sentence appears in Livro do Desassossego (The Book of Disquietude), a fragmentary work attributed mainly to the semi‑heteronym Bernardo Soares.
- What remains uncertain
- Pessoa left notebooks rather than a finished book; editors assembled the fragments after his death, so wording and order differ across editions and translations.
Pessoa means that literature doesn't just report life: it turns life into a pleasurable distance, a dreamed simulation. The line comes from The Book of Disquietude (as rendered by Richard Zenith), a fragmentary work that probes how writing can be both refuge and object of scrutiny.
“The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.”
Source: In the Skin of a Lion, 1987 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The sentence appears in Michael Ondaatje’s novel In the Skin of a Lion and is printed in a passage that continues, “Meander if you want to get to town.”
From In the Skin of a Lion, the line asks readers to trust a story that works slowly and subtly. It’s metafictional: the novel promises not a neat plot but a faint, humane order that emerges from overlapping lives and fragments of history.
“In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.”
Source: O, The Oprah Magazine, Becoming a Writer, November 2009 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The line appears in Junot Díaz’s November 2009 O magazine piece “Becoming a Writer” and is the ending of a longer passage.
- What remains uncertain
- Attribution to Díaz is verified; the commonly quoted wording omits an earlier sentence that frames the comment by rejecting the notion of effortless talent.
Díaz frames being a writer as an act of stubborn commitment: identity comes from continuing to write when hope and signs of promise are absent. Published in a 2009 O piece, the line insists on persistence over the myth of effortless talent.