6 Quotes & Sayings By Ngaio Marsh

Ngaio Marsh was born in New Zealand in 1920. At the age of four, she was left incapacitated by polio. She spent the next eleven years under the supervision of her mother, who was determined that Ngaio should not live with her father because he drank too much. Although her early childhood was lonely and deprived, she later credited this period with giving her an enthusiasm for life and an appreciation of individuality Read more

Her first published work, The Man Who Lived Underground, appeared when she was eighteen years old, and it featured a winning romantic element which was to remain a constant throughout her life. In 1941 she joined the New Zealand Women's Land Army and served in a number of places including Wanganui, Wellington and Napier. In 1946, while on leave from the Land Army, she began to write full-time for a Wellington newspaper.

Three years later, while living in Christchurch, she published the first of two detective stories, In a Lonely Place. In 1953 she moved to London and worked as a free-lance journalist until 1954 when she married Gordon Daviot and took up writing full-time once again. She has been writing novels ever since.

1
We do not wait for inspiration. We work because we've jolly well got to. But when all is said and done, we toil at this particular job because it's turned out to be our particular job, and in a weird sort of way I suppose we may be said to like it. Ngaio Marsh
Above all things -- read. Read the great stylists who...
2
Above all things -- read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied. Ngaio Marsh
3
Why do you want to become an author? I will accept only one answer. If it is because you feel you can write better than you can do anything else then go ahead and do it without frills and flourishes. Stick to your present job and write in your spare time: but do it as if it is a whole time job. Ngaio Marsh
You must be able to write. You must have a...
4
You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery over words. Ngaio Marsh
5
Please don't entertain for a moment the utterly mistaken idea that there is no drudgery in writing. There is a great deal of drudgery in even the most inspired, the most noble, the most distinguished writing. Read what the great ones have said about their jobs; how they never sit down to their work without a sigh of distress and never get up from it witout a sigh of relief. Do you imagine that your Muse is forever flamelike -- breathing the inspired word, the wonderful situation, the superb solution into your attentive ear? .. Believe me, my poor boy, if you wait for inspiration in our set-up, you'll wait for ever. Ngaio Marsh