Quotes About Writing

Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.

I can still put down some pretty nasty stuff on paper, which is what I enjoy doing.

I can see a scene in my head, and when I try to get it down in words on paper, the words are clunky; the scene is not coming across right. So frustrating. And there are days where it keeps flowing. Open the floodgates, and there it is. Pages and pages coming. Where the hell does this all come from? I don't know.

I'm really interested in making a mark on a paper and letting that be cursive shorthand for an idea - that's the origin of cartooning.

I get a script and it's really interesting with scripts, because you never really know. It's paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working.

I am probably exaggerating a little, but I owe my equilibrium to ink and paper.

But with writing, all you need is a pad of paper.

I couldn't imagine having to write a paper and have to think about what song I am going to sing.

I know a lot of writers who would much rather be writing the Great American Novel, but they've got bills to pay and alimony, and so they take a job at a less-than-reputable paper. You know, you do what you gotta do.

Paper acts as an eraser on the mind, as soon as you look at what you've written.

I'm always writing; I'm always jotting things down on paper or making notes in my iPhone. Then I'll make myself sit down and kind of shape it up, but there's really no other way to practice other than onstage.

When I'm writing the first draft, I'm writing in a very slovenly way: anything to get the outline of the story on paper.

I have files, I have computer files and, you know, files on paper. But most of it is really in my head. So God help me if anything ever happens to my head!

'Ghost City' began as a idea. I felt that I hadn't read or heard a great deal about the sort of life that I thought I had, and I just thought that it would be interesting to sit down and see if I could put it down onto paper.

Sometimes things just fall out of your head on the paper, and if you're smart, you learn not to touch them.

The biggest influence on my books was the fact that I had worked in a newspaper for so long. In a daily paper, you learn to write very quickly; there is no time to sit and brood about what you are going to say.

Not intending to be funny: I sit at the keyboard, put my fingers on the keys and go. To me, it's the real secret of writing. Put yourself in front of the screen or the blank sheet of paper and get to work.

When I started writing, I just hoped for a nice little paperback series.

My high-school papers, my college-application essays, read like Norman Mailer packed in a crunchy-peanut-butter sandwich.

I had always loved to write and my mom was my editor for my school papers.

The most important thing I learned at the University of Florida is that a Ph.D. and writing papers is very important in the United States.

That was par for the course but I also found that commissions were being canceled and in fact I considered this directly libelous - I write biographies for a living as well as being a journalist - for a non fiction book to be called fiction from beginning to end.

Most of the stuff I've written has never even gotten made. It's par for the course. It's a great living, but it also gets very frustrating.

I used to be an obsessive outliner - figuring that writing without an outline was like jumping off a cliff and building a parachute on the way down.