Art & Creativity Quote by Bernard Cornwell

Cornwell isn’t romanticizing the solitary writer so much as puncturing a modern fetish: collaboration as virtue. The line lands because it’s both a confession and a quiet flex. “Simplicity” sounds modest, almost domestic, until you realize he’s redefining simplicity as sovereignty. Writing a novel is hard; what’s “simple” is the chain of command. One mind, one vote, no meetings.

The subtext is a critique of committee culture, especially the kind that dominates film, television, and even publishing at scale, where decisions get laundered through consensus until the sharp edges are sanded off. Cornwell’s work - historically grounded, plot-driven, architected with military precision - depends on decisive choices: pace, perspective, moral shading, the timing of violence. A committee doesn’t just slow that down; it changes the aesthetic. Group decision-making tends to reward the explainable and the unoffensive, not the risky or idiosyncratic.

There’s also an implicit defense of authorship as accountability. If you “make all the decisions yourself,” you also own the failures. Cornwell frames that burden as cleaner than the constant negotiation of shared projects, where responsibility diffuses and creative intent gets blurry. It’s a professional’s view, not a loner’s manifesto: he’s describing a workflow optimized for coherence.

Context matters: Cornwell came up in an era when the novelist could still be a primary cultural engine, not just raw material for an adaptation pipeline. The quote reads like a veteran reminding us that the most radical thing an artist can have is final cut.