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A novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter. ... To me it is utterly basic, yet it seems like it's a great secret.

Leon Uris

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Leon Uris
Age: 78 †
Born: 1924
Born: August 3
Died: 2003
Died: June 21
Novelist
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Leon Marcus Uris
Way
Lasts
Novelist
Like
Last
Chapter
Another
Chapters
Seems
Utterly
Must
Novelists
Great
Basic
Going
Toward
Work
Secret

More quotes by Leon Uris

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Talent isn't enough. You need motivation-and persistence, too: what Steinbeck called a blend of faith and arrogance. When you're young, plain old poverty can be enough, along with an insatiable hunger for recognition. You have to have that feeling of I'll show them. If you don't have it, don't become a writer.
Leon Uris
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The first thing you have to do is get immersed in the project, organizing yourself, knowing what you are going after and not going after. It is extremely important to know what you don't want to find. Research to me is as important or more important than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built.
Leon Uris
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I essentially write for myself.
Leon Uris
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I have drawn inspiration from the Marine Corps, the Jewish struggle in Palestine and Israel, and the Irish
Leon Uris
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I have been writing for 50 years and readers still read my first book from when I was in the Marine Corps.
Leon Uris
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If you're lucky enough to fall in love, that's one thing. Otherwise all that was ever truly beautiful to me was boyhood. It's the meal we sup on for the rest of our lives. Love puts the icing on life. But if you don't find it...you must call on your childhood memories over and over till you do.
Leon Uris
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On one occasion I went to Afghanistan to look at the borders and learn something about the situation there to see if my book was there?and it wasnt.
Leon Uris
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Usually a good part of the people trying it end up not making it.
Leon Uris
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So writing is a very, very difficult position to obtain... and retain.
Leon Uris
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Life hinges on many factors we cannot control. Two of the most important factors, we can control. We can manage our relationships-and what is life but a series of relationships?-and we can correct our mistakes, here on earth within our life span.
Leon Uris
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You usually dont know what you are going to write about so you go to the places and talk to the people who were identified with the events.
Leon Uris
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I am very proud of this work because it is more about the meaning of the Easter Rising and its relationship to what this whole century has been about, people liberating themselves, freeing themselves.
Leon Uris
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Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother me and my brother against our father my family against my cousins and the clan the clan against the tribe and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel.
Leon Uris
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I was a terrible English student.
Leon Uris
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Research to me is as important or more important than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built
Leon Uris
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You can lie to your wife or your boss, but you cannot lie to your typewriter. Sooner or later you must reveal your true self in your pages.
Leon Uris
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Love can't mature in one room. It has to come out of the full sharing of everything: joys, aspirations, downfalls, all of it. That's the only real path to love.
Leon Uris
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There's a curse on me as there's a curse on the Larkin name. The curse comes back, again and again, to taunt me! Ronan! Kilty! Tomas! And now me! What are the Irish among men? Are we lepers? Are we a blight? Will there ever be an end to our tears?
Leon Uris
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To me, a writer is one of the most important soldiers in the fight for survival of the human race. He must stay at his post in the thick of fire to serve the cause of mankind.
Leon Uris
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You can try to reach an audience, but you just write what comes out of you and you just hope that it is accepted. You do not write specifically to a generation.
Leon Uris