Quotes About Writing

I've written a lot of books now; I've been published for over 30 years. I hope with every book I learn something new, and with every new novel I try to improve the process of writing.

It's all in the writing. The writing has got to be there. Whether that's dialogue or character, or whatever, it doesn't matter. As long as they've done something special, than you can do something special.

Many years ago... many, many years ago, I brought up a boy, and I said to him, 'Son, if you ever become a writer, try to write a good part for your old man sometime.' Well, by cracky, that's what he did!

I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing.

Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.

I would like to write my biography sometime. I love to write. I could write for weeks and weeks, maybe say nothing but just for the writing.

You write it down because finally, when it's written down you do get it out of your system somewhat.

I guess I find the boundaries between poetry and prose to be somewhat permeable.

When I was in college, I did do some writing of poetry, somewhat inspired, I think at that time, by Carl Sandburg, because English was still relatively new to me, and Sandburg, of course, wrote in a very easy-to-understand, very colloquial and informal manner.

All of my books have an internal geometric shape, and once I've seen the shape, then the writing gets much faster and easier because I now do know where we're going, and I know what's motivating these people, why they were here, and therefore, I have some good idea how they got there, and so I can fill in the missing chunks somewhat more easily.

I find that I do my best work at the beginning of the day, but I'm rarely in a writing mood when I sit down. I'm usually somewhat sleep-deprived, and I always have a long list of other responsibilities calling my name.

Growing up, I didn't know any writers and felt somewhat isolated.

When I wrote for Eazy, I wrote for the character. Everybody knew Eazy loved girls, so I would make him funny, even though it was somewhat misogynistic.

I am not somebody who meets a man or a woman somewhere and feels like that is an incredible character that I must write into a play.

That's why writing is important to me. Time goes past, and you've been somewhere and come back that hasn't hurt you, and you've been somebody else.

My books come to me in images, and sometimes the image is at the beginning of the book, and sometimes it's simply a flash somewhere in the middle.

I would write scripts and little plays and perform them in the living room for my family when I was little with my brother until my mom said, 'Alright, you need to go do it somewhere else other than the house.'

I simply don't understand authors that know everything before they write it; it seems so cold blooded. I think it's lovely when the story takes over and goes somewhere else.

What I wish is that people would look beyond the tribbles and see I've written some other books that I really would like people to notice. There's 'The Man Who Folded Himself,' there's 'The Martian Child,' which is about my son and the adoption. There's 'The War Against The Chtorr,' which is my magnum opus, my great epic story.

My son had toyed with the idea of writing and trying to write a little bit, so that kind of gave me the bug to write also.

I write while my son is at school. At about 7:45 A.M., I walk him there, with the dogs, then walk them for another forty minutes or so, go home and chain myself to the desk a little before 9 A.M., and try not to be distracted until I hear my son plunge through the front door at about 3 P.M.

I actually didn't listen to the Beatles song 'Nowhere Man' when I was writing my book of the same name. What I listened to a lot was 'Abbey Road.' Its disjointedness and its readiness to confuse only to delight were inspiring to me.

My biggest ritual is writing at home more than on the road. I do very little writing on the road. Actually, it's funny to bring this into it, but one thing I always do is have a cup of coffee. I drink the most coffee when I'm writing songs.

I would love to write a screenplay for 'Badlands' one day. I don't think I could ever have the patience to do it; I don't even have the patience to write songs. I write some of the shortest songs ever because I don't have the patience.