Quotes by C. S. Forester

About C. S. Forester:

Cecil Louis Troughton Smith was an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of naval warfare. His most notable works were the 12-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic wars, and The African Queen (1935; filmed in 1951 by John Huston). His novels, A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours, were jointly awarded the 1938 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

They managed to find time... to tell me that there was no chance of my being accepted for service and that really I should be surprised to still be alive.

C. S. Forester

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.

C. S. Forester

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

C. S. Forester

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

C. S. Forester

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.

C. S. Forester

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.

C. S. Forester

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.

C. S. Forester

Perhaps that suspicion of fraud enhances the flavor.

C. S. Forester

The doctor who applied a stethoscope to my heart was not satisfied. I was told to get my papers with the clerk in the outer hall. I was medically rejected.

C. S. Forester

The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day.

C. S. Forester

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

C. S. Forester

There is still need to think and plan, but on a different scale, and along different lines.

C. S. Forester

When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask.

C. S. Forester

With two people and luggage on board she draws four inches of water. Two canoe paddles will move her along at a speed reasonable enough in moderate currents.

C. S. Forester

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.

C. S. Forester

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

C. S. Forester

Author Bio

  • NameC. S. Forester
  • DescriptionBritish novelist
  • AliasesCecil Lewis Troughton Smith; Cecil Scott Forester
  • BornAugust 27, 1899
  • DiedApril 2, 1966
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Screenwriter; Novelist
  • AwardsJames Tait Black Memorial Prize