Quotes About Writing

I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure.

I've never cackled with laughter at a single line I've ever written. None of it has given me pleasure.

I still get enormous pleasure and a sense of fulfillment out of writing a book that I'm proud of. I see myself as a bit like a jewel-maker who can sit back and admire his work.

If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there's just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing.

I always have been a busy person, doing my own housework, helping the Man of the Place when help could not be obtained; but I love to work. And it is a pleasure to write. And, oh, I do just love to play!

People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.

The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need.

I think I get certain pleasure from writing what I'm performing.

I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with things that are hidden and difficult, and this means, I think, that pleasure is out of the question. I would associate this with narcissism anyway, and I would disapprove of it.

Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don't have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.

Pleasures. I had to cut them back so I can write. And it's worked! It so has. But I am the most boring human on the planet.

There are plenty of books that tell you how to become a writer, but not one that suggests how, if you want a normal life, you might reverse the process.

I don't think Ireland has ever had a genius for the novel. Of course, there were plenty of Irish novels, but I don't think that was ever the natural means of expression for the Irish.

There are plenty of examples of people who have had busy lives out there in the world, trying to do good, and written very well at the same time.

I certainly think I'll end up writing about America in some form. I've taken plenty of notes. I like America very much.

I've read plenty of amazing science pieces where the writers don't hang out in labs. I just have fun doing it. And I get rewarded for it; I get gushy, especially when kids tell me they expected to be bored by my books, but weren't.

I bristle at the implication that only with the help of a Big Six editor does a novel lose its self-indulgent aspects. Before the advent of self-publishing, there were plenty of self-indulgent novels on the shelves.

Anyone who's familiar with my writing schedule knows that there is always plenty of time between books for me!

The book I'm working on next, which will be my fifth, returns to literary history. I really do love literary history, and I have plenty more ideas on it.

'Daredevil: Season One' is kind of in-between. On the one hand, sure, it's a graphic novel. But on the other, it's beholden to existing continuity, and we're still telling the story in issue-length chapters. So it's not that different to writing a miniseries, and I've done plenty of those.

There have been plenty of things that I've written that other people haven't cared about, but it hasn't stopped me from being a writer. So, I don't even think about other people. I'm just interested writing about human beings so if somebody calls and says, 'We'd like you to do it,' I'd say, 'That sounds like a cool idea.'

I'm really quite bad at coming up with plot ideas. I like to create characters and just see what will happen to them when I let them loose!

I'm not like a Sears Catalog of ideas. I don't have that many ideas. I've more or less written them over the years. Usually, I come up with a situation or a character, and it rattles around in my head until the story or the plot emerges.

I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.