Quotes About Writing

Well, unlike a lot of authors, I will be the one to cop to having a ghostwriter. I've always written with someone else.

Unlike F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Wolfe, I don't like proper dress while working. I like writing in pajama-like clothing, which eases and relaxes me and allows me to connect with the decidedly improper.

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.

Unlike life, you've got more or less complete control over what's going on in your stories. That's not to say you can make characters do whatever you want them to - they usually have a life of their own if you've done your job properly.

Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.

Unlike a typical professional, I can't quit my job to become a full-time author; I don't have that luxury. For me, writing is therapy; if I choose to write full-time, it might start feeling like work.

Unlike motor sport, I didn't get into music for the live performances. I like writing and studio work and seeing how a song can come to life.

I'm bound to fail when I write in Italian, but unlike my sense of failure in the past, this doesn't torment or grieve me.

Simply writing a Ph.D. or academic book was unlikely to play much of a role in helping shape people's lives as I wanted.

Because if you're trying to write and you have unlimited time, you can procrastinate an unlimited account, but if you have limited time, you rush to the page trying to get something down in the little bit of fragment of time that you have, and you may write a great deal that way.

I don't plan anything out, and I don't write in chronological order. The emotional tenor is what guides me, but a lot of it is feeling my way through the dark. That's okay if you have unlimited time to work and stumble upon things in a delightful way, but under a deadline, it can be really stressful.

Sometimes, we writers find the perfect research material. I can't overstate how how precious that feels - it's as though you're having an intimate conversation with someone who has the key to unlock your project.

Just as there are moments when the words flow and it feels like the easiest job in the world, there are many more when I think I have nothing to say, and my journalism training taught me that writing is a job, that you write whether you are inspired or not, and that the only way to unlock creativity is to write through it.

I certainly want people to like my writing, but I know that if I write with the intention of trying to please people, the writing will not be good because it will not be authentic. So, ironically, I have to be willing to write something strange or unlovable in order to write anything truly good.

I don't feel unlucky in love anymore, and it's not all emo. It's a scary place to be in when you're like: 'What am I supposed to write about now? I don't feel heartbroken, so now what?'

All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn't need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.

My mother was a journalist, so writing is not unnatural to me.

Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.

I think the goal with any writing, but especially narrative nonfiction, is to put the blockade of putting your thoughts in this unnatural medium of print and then trying to reach through that and actually convey what's going on, what you think, and make people laugh and recognize themselves while doing it. Definitely the laughing thing.

I don't think about the reader when I'm writing, but I do when I'm editing, of course. For instance, I self-consciously didn't want to do anything to increase the divide between mothers and nonmothers - I think that divide is so horrible and destructive and unnecessary.

To be honest, writing comics is a dream come true - the form is unparalleled and is home to some of the most original and innovative storytelling around.

I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly.

When I'm writing a novel, I'm dealing with a double life. I live in the present at the same time that I live in the past with my characters. It is this that makes a novelist so eccentric and unpleasant.

Know what your characters want, know what they need most, know what they fear most, and don't be fearful of facing it, no matter how unpleasant it may be.