Quotes About Writing

Trying to solve the mystery is what I enjoy most about writing.

I get intrigued by a puzzle, and writing a book is the best way to solve it.

If I can write it, I can cope. And I've been writing many books, but in every book, I try to explore something in my own soul that I need to solve, I need to understand.

I love Joan Didion, but I love her writing. I don't think meeting her could solve my problems or make me understand the world better.

Writing about a person whose struggle you wish you could solve is an act of compassion and also, frankly, opportunism.

You're thinking about the physical consequences about what you're writing if you're going to direct it. If you're not going to direct it, then it's somebody else's problem, and they'll solve it.

I didn't publish my book until I was 37. So the ability to pay my bills, pay my rent, make a life for myself, and become a working writer was a puzzle that took me a while to solve.

I've long believed that the work-out life has lessons for the writing life. I've 'solved' a lot of books while at the gym, in part because I'm not trying to solve them at that precise moment.

For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle. But I don't intend my novels as puzzles. I intend them as invitations to dance.

I love the idea that the editing room is the final time you write. You should still be creatively solving problems even at that point. It's not really until you're locked that you can call it quits.

I'm engaged in food on so many levels, and I love that. So my work, my craft, is around food, and writing is one aspect of it; communicating a narrative, cooking online is one aspect of it; solving the food chasm that we have in Harlem and finding a farmers market is another one, and all of them are equally exciting for me.

In so many ways, being a literary agent is an irresistible job to me. Not only does it involve all the things I love - being an advocate for others, problem solving, and going to meetings - yes, that's true, I love meetings, though everyone says it's bizarre! - but most importantly, I love working with people whose writing excites me.

I never have my CNN off, it's on the whole day. I don't want to be out of range of television. I'm constantly bombarded by information - Somalia one second, Haiti the next - I need that constant pounding. I couldn't write without television. I need to have the world in my room.

I just keep following the good writing. I'm not good enough to make bad writing look good. Some people can, and I admire them for it, but I cannot. I will go down with the ship.

You start at the end, and then go back and write and go that way. Not everyone does, but I do. Some people just sit down at the page and start off. I start from what happened, including the why.

I think finally good writing gets out there, and people like it, and bad writing doesn't. Well, no. Bad writing does get out there 'cause some people like it.

Some things get written more quickly than others, but I can't really measure degrees of difficulty.

There are some things that I write that I know are personal in a way, or the gag is so obscure that it's just for me, and there's other things that could basically be for anybody or be anything, at least until the lyrics start to get written.

I came across humanity in Istanbul, and all I know about life comes from Istanbul, and definitely, I am writing about Istanbul. I also love the city because I live there, it has formed me, and it's me. Of course it is natural. If somebody lived all his life in Delhi, he will write about Delhi.

I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday.

I keep working under the delusion that someday a library will ask for my manuscripts.

Any experience that isn't fun is probably something I will at least use in my writing someday.

I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me.

Now I say I'm a diarist with an explanation I'll get back to you on. Someday I may try and write in memoir form.