Quotes About Writing

I've watched 'Ringu' probably three or four times before writing the first draft of 'The Ring.' And then I'd seen 'Ringu 2' I think once.

For years, the place I really lived - the world I watched, the one I thought and wrote about - was 15th-century France.

In television, there's this weird sense of isolation from your audience; you kind of get this feeling that you write the show for you and your wife and your friends and the other people who work on the show. It's our little show, and then it goes out into the world, and somebody watches it.

I've never had much interest in spinoffery - the idea of writing in someone else's universe generally leaves me cold - but 'Doctor Who' is different. I've grown up with it. It's been part of my life since I was tiny, watching Jon Pertwee on a grainy black and white television in Cornwall and being terrified out of my mind.

Stepping back into theatre, a childhood dream, I always felt like I would be onstage. I hadn't imagined myself in a composer role... I find it so satisfying to be behind the scenes and writing the music and watching it elevated and characterized by different voices than my own. It's so exciting.

I try to imagine the scenes as I'm writing them as if I were watching them play like a film.

I used to write stories a lot because you had to fill your hours some other way than watching television. So my imagination was vivid, and I used to write a lot of stories. I wrote a novel, which I still have, which is so awful.

I think watching TV has influenced my books, but I don't think writing TV has.

I keep a picture of my beloved children close by. Also, water and plenty of pads and pens.

I needed my life as a springboard for my fiction. I have to have something solid under my feet when I write. I'm not a fantasist. I bounce up and down on the diving board, and I go into the water of fiction. But I've got to begin in life so I can pump life into it throughout.

Writing, to me, is like kayaking a river. You are paddling down, and you come to a walled-off canyon, and you make a sharp turn, and you don't know what's around the corner. It could be a waterfall, it could be a big pool. The narrative current carries you. You're surprised, and you're thrilled, and sometimes you're terrified.

I didn't really see a way to make a living on the farm. I always loved writing. I was the guy who won the D.A.R. essay contest and things like that, and it was the era of Watergate, and I decided I would be the next Woodward and Bernstein, and then retire to the farm.

Some of the things I have written about are a way of connecting with my father - I know he knew who Idi Amin was, and I know he knew who Longford was. And I know he knew who Nixon was, because shortly before he died, I talked to him about Watergate.

It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.

I genuinely miss writing now on the rare days I don't write; my mouth waters when I think about writing, and I have an extreme physical reaction to the idea of doing it.

The thing you can't let go of is gravity. The reality of gravity in writing. If someone says something really mean in a sitcom, and the next wave isn't a reaction to the reality of that, you start losing relatability. In a lot of romantic comedies, they throw out the rules of life.

I think there's a difference between having a bestselling book - meaning through marketing, PR and buying that first wave of customers - and writing a bestselling book. The second implies that the product propels itself to the best seller list.

If I could wave a magic wand and be anything, I'd be a really respected, really successful author. That's a hard combination to get, though. I really enjoy acting, and it's easier, frankly.

I really kill myself on titles, although 'The 5th Wave' seems like an obvious title, doesn't it? You don't know how long that took me.

At least three times a week, I am overwhelmed with a wave of gratitude to New York City for providing me with a life. Not that my life is so great, although I think it's pretty nifty: I don't mine coal; I get paid to write.

Writing is pretty flexible work, don't you think? If you want to surf, you just have to get a lot done when the waves are lousy. That's what I'm always telling myself, anyway - write while the surf's down!

Writing, for me, is a very fluid process. I sit down and wait for the words to come. They usually do - in buckets and waves. I look upon it as a blessing because the words come so easily.

I didn't know how to write a novel, so I sort of let it happen in waves. The only way I could write it was to think like scenes in a movie.

I could see no position to say, 'I'm going to make a living as a writer.' But I went to classes for it; I read every play in 'Theater' magazine. I saw the second acts of everything on Broadway - I had a job as a CBS usher in New York City, and on my way home every night, I'd see what shows I could get into.