Quotes About Writing

I believe a good writer can write a good book with any sort of character, in any sort of setting, but I prefer to write about the outsider. It might just be because I've been one (or perceived myself to be one) for so much of my life. But the simple fact of being marginalized immediately brings conflict to a story before the narrative even begins, and that's gold for a writer because it means that your character already has depth before events begin to unfold.

I'd say that any character or setting can be given a bit of an otherworldly sheen and be the better for it. The one thing I insist on with my own writing is that I won't let magic solve my characters' real world problems. The solutions have to come from the characters themselves.

There isn't a single day I don't do some writing -- if you don't, you won't have a book. When you're self-employed it is very easy to burn away your time instead -- answering e-mails, surfing the Internet, or hanging out with friends. You really must have the discipline to sit down and write every day. Most of what I am writing is living in the back of my head or in my subconscious. I find if I write every day, my subconscious will do the job for me.

You always want to go out there with the best book possible, so I listen to what my editors say, and even if they don't know how to fix it, I always seem to find a way. 'Trust Your Eyes' is the best book I've written, and I don't know if I can do any better.

I am a slow worker, but I could have written at least two books more in the time that I have been obliged to spend waiting around public offices and in the back yards of recruiting stations—waiting unnecessarily for unnecessary things.

Great American Novel" = "doorstop of a book, usually pretentious, written by a man.

No había, por mi parte, falta de cariño ni dureza de corazón. Cuando escrutas tus sentimientos con un exceso de obsesiva atención, llega un momento en que se te escapan.

I believe the impulse to write comes out of a failure to communicate by any other means.

Era uno de esos tipos con una conversación increíblemente lúcida, pero que se paralizaban ante el teclado. Era extraño cómo algunas personas podían ser tan parlanchinas y expresarse tan bien cuando estaban de palique por la calle y, sin embargo, ser incapaces de escribir una frase con sentido aun cuando en ello les fuera la vida.

Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing -- he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.

That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretense that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon.

Writers of memoir are storytellers, and the point of a personal story is to make a truth that resonates for you, that closes the experience around a narrative and brings it to completion.

Before I became a suspense novelist, I wrote romantic suspense as Alicia Scott.

Will and I are thinking about writing a movie," Ben said. "It's called Theater Closed for Repairs.

You're into happiness?" the technician says, her eyes never leaving the computer screen. "I'm writing a book about it," I say. "About happiness?" she says. "Yes," I say. " Didn't the Dali Lama already write that book?

I am picky about the books I read. I don't waste time on head trash. I think Benjamin Disraeli said it best, "When I want to read a good book I write one.

They weren't bad books. They were books that you didn't enjoy. It's not the same thing at all. The only bad books are books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that has been published is going to be a "good book" for someone.

There is nothing worse than a man who can't spell — it takes all the romance out of cards and love letters and things.

But she needed to write it down to make it into a story instead of the truth about her life.

The only bad books are books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that had been published is going to be a 'good book' for someone

They weren't bad books," Phin countered patiently. "They were books that you didn't enjoy. It's not the same thing at all. The only bad books are books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that has been published is going to be a 'good book' for someone." I

Os únicos livros ruins são aqueles tão mal escritos que ninguém publica. Qualquer livro publicado vai ser um "livro bom" para alguém.

They weren't bad books, Phin countered patiently. 'They were books that you didn't enjoy. It's not the same thing at all. The only bad books are books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that has been published is going to be a 'good book' for someone.

Writing is a struggle against the silence where words can have a powerful impact in just a split second and change your life forever........