Quotes About Writing

All writers steal. You might as well steal from the best.

When people ask me where I get my ideas, I lie. I tell them I draw inspiration from the news, the world, my dreams. Or I joke and say that I steal from other writers. I lie because I don't know where ideas come from, and I'm afraid if I look too hard, they'll stop coming.

There's a difference between hiring writers and stealing jokes.

I had been attempting novels since I was 14 but always ran out of steam. High hopes, poor craftsmanship.

If you aren't having fun, if you aren't anxious to find out what happens next as you write, then not only will you run out of steam on the story, but you won't be able to entertain anyone else, either.

I don't think I will ever write about politics or foreign policy. I feel like there is so much good writing in those areas that I have little to add. I also like to steer clear of writing about people whom I do not personally like.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

The short story, it's not a step on the way to becoming a novelist.

I have never written a book about my life, despite being offered purses of gold. I made 'Boxes' because I wanted to make a sincere depiction of a daughter who has lost her father, or the jealousy one can feel towards a daughter who has become more beautiful than you and whose stepfather starts to take her shopping.

If you're Stephen King and you have a massive body of huge-selling well-respected work, you can pivot and do whatever you want. I don't have that body of work, I don't have that audience that's comfortable with me enough yet to follow my bliss with me.

Stephen King in many respects is a wonderful writer. He has made a contribution. People in the future will be able to pick up Stephen King's books and learn a lot about who we were by reading those books.

I think Judy Blume, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz are the three authors responsible for my being where I am today. I owe them a lot.

I think many people would say that writers like Stephen King have hypergraphia.

Sure, best seller. I'd love to knock Stephen King off the top of the list. I know I won't, but, after all, I spend my life inventing a different reality.

Stephen King. Now I'm not crazy about him, but he's a great a writer.

I'm a big Stephen King fan.

I actually love Stephen King's writing. I mean, we, actually, at Castle Rock, we've made seven movies out of Stephen King books.

Unless you are Stephen King, a book signing is attended by maybe 40 or 50 people.

I'm not a dedicated writer in the sense of Stephen King.

I became a reader - never mind a writer - because of Stephen King.

Being a best-selling author doesn't make you a millionaire. It's not like Stephen King.

My father is a poet, my stepmother is a poet, and so I always had encouragement as a child to write.

I feel I'm able to get rid of any demons lurking in my psyche through my writing, which leaves me free to create all of this and to enjoy our family life, stepping away from all the fictional traumas and the dramas. If I write about family in crisis, then I won't have to live through it, I guess.

Writers tend to write stories as a kind of holiday between novels, or as preliminary steps towards a novel. Stories just don't often make up a writer's main body of work, and that's not because they don't see the market for it.