Literary Birthday – 23 February – Bernard Cornwell

Happy Birthday, Bernard Cornwell, born 23 February 1944.

Seven Cornwell Quotes On Writing

1. The point of life, as I see it, is not to write books or scale mountains or sail oceans, but to achieve happiness, and preferably an unselfish happiness.
2. And yes, there’s a simplicity to writing books because you’re not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.
3. At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers’ groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.
4. Then you start another book and suddenly the galley proofs of the last one come in and you have to wrench your attention away from what you’re writing and try to remember what you were thinking when you wrote the previous one.
5. It’s fun. I sit down every day and tell stories. Some folk would kill to get that chance.
6. One book at a time… though I’m usually doing the research for others while I’m writing, but that sort of research is fairly desultory and I like to stick to the book being written – and writing a book concentrates the mind so the research is more productive.
7. Writing is a solitary occupation.

Read: 6 Writing Tips From Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell is a British author of historical novels. He is best known for his novels featuring Napoleonic Wars rifleman, Richard Sharpe, which were adapted into a series of Sharpe television films. The first book in the series was Sharpe’s Eagle. Other works include The Saxon Chronicles Series, which began with The Last Kingdom in 2004.

 by Amanda Patterson

Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: Literary Birthday Calendar

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