Quotes About Writing

I'd be far too self-conscious and insecure if I suspected my editor might be a better novelist than I.

A novel I read when I was about 17 or 18 - 'The World According to Garp,' by John Irving - really made me want to become a writer. The character of Garp is a novelist, and at the time, the whole lifestyle of being a writer was hugely appealing to me.

I'm a novelist, and I'm a woman, and I'm considered to be a serious author whether I like it or not.

I saw myself as a writer, a novelist, even though I was living the life of a mother and housewife. Writing was - and is - what I do.

I've always wanted to be a novelist, so I just try to write really great narrative.

I wrote a novel, so now they can call me a novelist. I tell stories; that's it.

Why does any novelist keep writing long after they've made money? Because they've failed to write the perfect novel.

As a novelist, you write about social mores, but not everything can be explained.

Really, what you should tell a novelist is, 'Keep going until you finish the draft. Don't show it to anyone.'

I couldn't have been the novelist I was without being the journalist I was.

I'm not an especially male novelist, but I think men are better at writing about men, and the same is true for women. Reading Saul Bellow is a revelation, but he can't write women. There are exceptions, like Marilynne Robinson's 'Gilead,' but generally, I think it's true.

I think if I was interested in writing on my own, I would be a novelist - then you could write about yourself, and that would be it. You wouldn't need anyone else.

My whole life, I've wanted to be a novelist.

I'm not a writer; I'm not a novelist.

My dad was very successful as a journalist, so I didn't want to be one. I wanted to be a novelist.

I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn't the most athletic guy at school.

I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.

I have always loved short stories. I have been at least as influenced by the short story masters as I have been by novelists.

Novelists are no more moral or certain than anybody else; we are ideologically adrift, and if we are any good then our writing will live in several places at once. That is both our curse and our charm.

The novel is just fine: It's novelists who aren't doing so well.

I saw novelists as being admirable people and I thought... I thought... maybe, one day, I could be one of them.

I wrote my first novel in the same conditions as most first novelists - I had a full-time job, I shared an apartment, I had no time - and so I became a compulsive outliner of everything. Ever since then, my process has consisted of trying to forcibly rid myself of that compulsion.

Novelists seem to fall into two distinct categories - those that plan and those that just see where it takes them. I am very much the former category.

Many first-time novelists end up rewriting their first two or three chapters, trying to get them 'just right.' But the point of the first draft is not to get it right; it's to get it written - so that you'll have something to work with.