H.M. Forester Quotes

A whim, a passing mood, readily induces the novelist to move hearth and home elsewhere. He can always plead work as an excuse to get him out of the clutches of bothersome hosts.

When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.

The work is with me when I wake up in the morning; it is with me while I eat my breakfast in bed and run through the newspaper, while I shave and bathe and dress.

Perhaps that suspicion of fraud enhances the flavor.

The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.

Novel writing wrecks homes.

Novel writing is far and away the most exhausting work I know.

A man who writes for a living does not have to go anywhere in particular, and he could rarely afford to if he wanted.

There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

I'd rather be in trouble for having done something than for not having done anything.

Everything was in stark and dreadful contrast with the trivial crises and counterfeit emotions of Hollywood, and I returned to England deeply moved and emotionally worn out.

I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.

I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.

You can overcome almost any obstacles, unless you are the obstacle.

Like the birds I will fly.

Success in business doesn't come without passion, vision, hard work, and knowing that you're doing the right thing.

The way I was raised, if something wasn't tough it was not a valuable or enriching experience.

I thank God daily for the good fortune of my birth, for I am certain I would have made a miserable peasant.

I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this.

There's nowhere else to escape to ... Except in a wooden box, that is.

An angry man will find himself in an angry world, and a swindler will find himself in a world of thieves whom he dare not trust. Like attracts and mirrors like.

The cork was in the bottle. He and the Atropos were trapped.

A motto of many politicians, public servants and money bags: Ask not 'What can I do for you?' but 'What can I do you for?

Smoking is suicide by instalments.

There is no such thing as 'just one last cigarette' – except the last cigarette that you've already had.

Real patience is not the same as waiting impatiently for something for a long time. Patience is having patience with patience.

Maybe like the never-ending stories within stories of the One Thousand and One Nights, life is dream within dream all the way through?

I? This is the very root of all evil.

Also, that men fall into two classes--those who forget views and those who remember them, even in small rooms.