John Gregory Quotes

I’ve always thought a novelist only has one character and that is himself or herself.

What a writer brings to any story is an attitude

The narrative was too constricted; it was like a fetus strangling on its own umbilical cord.

Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

Violence is the way stupid people try to level the playing field.

The world is divided up into two kinds of people - those who look at their body waste in the toilet bowl, and those who don't.

I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge.

The professional guts a book through - in full knowledge that what he is doing is not very good. Not to work is to exhibit a failure of nerve.

Stress is when you're 29 years old, playing for Rochdale, with an expiring contract and a mortgage to pay.

Wit is the most dangerous talent you can possess. It must be guarded with great discretion and good-nature, otherwise it will create you many enemies.

There are two types of people ... the scrutinizers and the scrutinized

The point of a notebook is to jumpstart the mind.

Novels do take charge of the writer, and the writer is basically a kind of sheepdog just trying to keep things on track.

Recruit for the future not just for the gap.

Doncaster will hit Villa with fire and broomstick.

Because one has written other books does not mean the next becomes any easier.

The eleventh commandment of a motion picture negotiation: Thou shalt not take less than thy last deal.

Only World War II, which mobilized 10 million draftees, could by any stretch of the imagination be called a people's war.

Writing is a manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

Retirement is purgatory for the former sports star. The world outside organized sports is unforgiving.

We have reached a place too dark to see, so we shall go together.