Quotes About Writing

I'd decided to write about stuff that I would like to hear standup about.

I want to do everything, so when I started I wanted to be an actress, and I've always written funny things. I love that; it gives me a real sense of achievement and joy. I also love presenting. I'd never been interested in it before but found it pretty fun and easy, and I really enjoyed working with a group - standup is so lonely.

Usually, to promote a new work, I'll aspire to be published in the 'Columbia Law Review' or the 'Stanford Law Review' and to have at least five really enticing footnotes.

I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones' at Stanford. So I workshopped the entire thing.

I dabbled in writing, wrote really bad poetry in high school. I also took a few writing classes when I was an undergrad at Stanford. I was so intimidated.

I went to classes on writing for film and theatre as well as short stories at Stanford.

I write a number of screenplays, and I've never really come up with a part for a movie star.

I like to go out and write. So I'll often go to a Starbucks or a local coffee bar, and I'll sit there and I'll write. I can write pretty much anywhere.

Writing with kids is an adventure. It seems like someone always has the flu or pink-eye. I mean, you don't even have to be in direct contact with anyone to get pink-eye. But for parents who write, flexibility becomes essential, and as long as I have a pad of paper and a pen, I can write anywhere. Starbucks is fine.

There were aspects of stardom I didn't like, which were of no consequence, really, but the positive things far outweighed the negative. By the time I came to write 'Setting Sons,' I felt my writing was more like prose, set to music.

I sit in my little office and I feel like I've got all my readers staring at me.

Now that I'm staring down the barrel of the last act of my life, I'm less excited about control and solo effort, and I resent the way the business aspects interfere with my space for creative writing.

I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours.

I'm fond of my werecats, if only because I have four real-world felines staring at me as I type.

We go to the office every day when we're writing - or supposed to be writing. It's not always productive, and there's a lot of procrastinating, just staring at the wall, like any other writing. But we just make ourselves go to the office every day for more or less the whole day.

For me, writing in public is actually super energizing and so much fun. Especially when writing can typically be really painful and certainly hard, and often, you're staring at the page and thinking, like, 'Uh, is this any good? What am I doing?'

Part of the reason I wanted to write a novel was that in fiction I could do something that's difficult to do in real life, which is to dwell on the stark details of the experience without really needing to create that narrative of redemption.

I wrote 'Ruined' and 'Vera Stark' at the same time. That's just how my brain functions - when I'm dwelling someplace very heavy, I need a release.

When I began my career as a flight attendant, I was a 21-year-old with a B.A. in English and stars in her eyes. I wanted to see every city in the world. I wanted to have adventures that, I hoped, would fuel a writing career some day.

I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write.

While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.

I have the infinite galaxy from '2001' as my screensaver - so if I space out while I'm writing and it goes to screensaver, I can just stare off into the stars.

I'm a novelist who read a lot as a kid. When you grow up on books and then grow up to write books, famous authors are a lot more meaningful to you than TV and movie stars.

Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even when I first started doing pieces.