Quotes About Writing

My entire adult life has been devoted to family and career, each adding to the other in many rewarding ways. I have never felt that I had to set a pattern for my writing and teaching.

My movies are unadorned, they're not particularly fancy, I think they're kind of workmanlike in some ways, focusing on the writing and the acting.

What greatly annoys me is sometimes you see the short story being described as a training ground for the novel. Kind of like an apprenticeship. And in lots of ways, it's a far harder form.

When I wrote 'Sideways Stories from Wayside School' I never expected it to be published. It was kind of a hobby. Now, it's a job, but it's a job I like very much.

We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.

I wouldn't know how to write a weak female character. I read so much epic fantasy growing up, where you have these sword-wielding, in-your-face warrior maidens.

Get your butt in a chair and write. If it comes out weak or bad or clunky or ordinary, then accept that this happens to everyone. Everyone. Get it down, get it done, and fix it in the rewrite. Just like everyone from Stephen King to J. K. Rowling to Chuck Palahniuk does.

Character is character and voice is voice, which translates nicely from writing novels to writing TV. But the process is different. You have a writer's room, people pitch you jokes and you collaborate.

Buying insurance is no one's idea of fun. And it's especially easy to berate something as funky-sounding as writing checks to defend our neighborhoods against apartment-size rocks from space. But this is one insurance pitch that makes perfect sense. Ask the dinos.

The easiest thing to write was 'Fever Pitch' because it was a memoir.

I didn't understand that TV writing wasn't writing; it was pitching.

I had a great AP U.S. History teacher in Pittsburgh. We still exchange Christmas cards. She was the first teacher who said I was a good writer - and I'd never heard that before. And so I remember that, and I remember that level of loving the material and really loving writing about it.

I write with pen and paper. I don't have a mobile or computer, because I know how great they are. If I did, I'd never leave the house - you'd find me in six months, dead under a pile of pizza boxes.

I once had a story editor ask me not to use the word 'placenta.' I wanted to say: 'Now tell me again how you got here?' Oh, right, an angel of God placed you into the bill of the stork.

It's kind of a catch-22 now because since the 'Da Vinci Code,' I have access to places and people that I didn't have access to before, so that's a lot of fun for somebody like me, but I'm always trying to keep a secret. I don't want people to know what I'm writing about.

I have kept journals at different times in my life. And a lot of my early notebooks became places where I would just think on the page, trying to parse what I was feeling, to find out what I was thinking.

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.

Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.

I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out.

I never had any master plan about directing, and I don't really write.

Pacing is not the sort of thing you can plan out beforehand, but you're always aware of it as you write, because you need to make constant decisions.

And I plan to write a sequel to Dragon Rider.