Quotes About Writing

Scientifically, information is a choice - a yes-or-no choice. In a broader sense, information is everything that informs our world - writing, painting, music, money.

It was only after I began to write fiction that I found a way to connect with painting.

I'd always loved writing, in the same way that I'd loved painting. I wouldn't have seen it as a career.

The more I've gotten interested in writing about history and making sense of myself within the continuum of history, the more I've turned to paintings, to art. I look to the imagery of art to help me understand something about my own place in the world.

I've always liked writing. Even when I was in art school and thought I was going to be a gallery painter, I liked to pair my artwork with writing. And so that naturally led to drawing comics.

Sometimes I'll have words or concepts written down before I have any type of music or anything. So when I have that, sometimes I just hear a beat and, if I feel like it'll match with the story that I have written down sonically, then I'll just pair them together.

I only wrote one diary to be read by others. I went on an exchange to France, working as an au pair, when I was 14 and in a battered red notebook I wrote my experiences for my father to read later.

When you're actually inside the experience of writing something, in some ways, you're just writing. Ultimately, you fall in love with the characters, and you get excited about the story, and you're sitting there in your sweatpants or pajamas, and you do get a little lost in it.

It's not that, living in Pakistan, I feel an enormous constraint on how I can write and what I can say; rather, I recognize that one has to navigate these things... Am I aware of things that one could say that would be risky or that could be dangerous? Certainly I'm aware of those things.

The Pakistani writers are addressing change and what's happening today in the world. There is something completely contemporary in this writing.

Pale ink is better than the most retentive memory.

'What time is it,' you ask? According to 16 of my dearest writing pals, it's always time for a wonderful romance!

I haven't written a brochure yet. It's killing me. I know I have a brochure or pamphlet in me yet.

The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all.

Sometimes I panic and think I can't really write.

When I start a new novel and find myself diverted by domestic activities, many of which I genuinely enjoy, I panic that I will never write another word.

When I first started writing, I did mostly short fiction, and I'd work on a short story and get near to being done and have no idea what I'd work on next, and then I'd panic.

In a first draft, I concentrate on moving forward and trying not to panic.

Routinely, when I finish a book, I think 'What will I do? Where will I get an idea?' And a kind of low-level panic sets in.

I write a lot because, if I don't, I start to panic, and I calm down when I write.

Often I have the impression that I am writing on paper that is already browning in the licks of the flames.

Characters are not created on paper or laptop alone.

My favorite thing is to be alone in a room with a blank paper in front of me and the time to fill it.

Writing is thought crystalized on a piece of paper, which can then be reviewed.