Quotes About Writing

The only kind of film I want to write is a story where I can keep on seeing the stories play out. I'm a huge television fan, and I'm a huge continuing storyline fan.

I like a great degree of compression. I like to mix lateral steps with forward ones. I don't want the prose ever to feel simply functional - at least not for any stretch.

I write because the act of writing itself is what drives me. It's a private communication within myself - nothing more or less. This doesn't mean I do not want to share with people.

By the end of the week, if I'm still alive, I get to write whatever I want about it all.

Writers need restrictions. If somebody just says, "Hey, do you want to write a novel, or an article, or a movie, or a short story, you get shut down."

I write in bed, too. I find it very comforting. I want to sort of, like, crawl in a fetal position if I have to.

You don't need to go to a therapist, you don't need to do all kinds of things. If you want to write, you physically have to do it.

All I know is that I have way more stuff that I want to write about than I possibly have time to.

I was always so relieved that anyone wants to publish anything I've written.

That'Â's a way to increase the realism to the reader, if you want to get technical - you leave it [character] vague and you let the reader fill in the blanks with their imagination.

After writing all day I go for a walk and see a piece of architecture i want to photograph and i have to take a picture and later a poem comes in my mind.

My object when writing prose is to write as clearly as possible. I think I know what I'm saying in prose, and I want others to understand it and to be able to restate it.

I've always written for actors, and if you want to write for good actors, you have to write parts that are surprising, that are human, and that allow them to go to a wide range of places.

Eventually the writing takes time. What I want to do is get the story down and I want to know what happens as I write my way into the knowledge of the story.

I do one Xanth novel a year, because at the moment that is all that publishers will accept; they don't want any other type of fiction from me, so Xanth pays my way.

I don't like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels … I keep my deep radical things for my novels.

That's why I haven't been so anxious. But now, lots of people write and say, 'I want to find out what you're doing.' So I know that this book will enlighten them.

Deirdre Maddon has an extraordinary, almost celestial way of telling a story. There are so many great writers now - although I also want to go back and read all of Dickens again.

I do send out information about my books. Very few people buy the books that way, but I always feel that if they want to know more about the process, they can get the information from my books.

I'm not one of those people who as a writer lets my characters tell me what they want to do or call to me or seek me. I go seeking for things, using them as an agent, really.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

Warfare is the father of all good things, it is also the father of good prose!

I took up writing to escape the drudgery of that every day cubicle kind of war.

I got to fall in love. I got to win a war. I got to write words that inspired a nation.