Quotes About Writing

It's really hard for me, every day, to confront my writing. It never gets easier over time.

I write to make some sense of things that confuse me. The mechanics of my own heart are the most confusing I know about - and don't know about - and other people's are a bit confusing, too.

To write what is not dead on the page, one has to be open to all kinds of disturbances and challenges and confusion.

Composers, like authors, have a lot in common. Our main goal is to connect with the listener emotionally.

I've found I sometimes have the best success working on characters I didn't really connect to right away.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

For me, writing stories is one way of feeling connected to the universe and God.

I love writing. I feel more connected to that than I do a lot of the other things.

When you write something you know, you're making a story that will work, whether or not there's bits taken. It's always funny to me when people say, 'Well, it's clearly autobiographical,' and I say, 'Well, how do you know my autobiography?' Certainly, there are things that are connected, but I just think it's a very interesting assumption.

I asked myself what it was that I wanted from writing and where my connection with books began, and the answer to that question was definitely in childhood, because that's where my connection with reading began.

I can't write about people I don't feel some sort of connection to.

Probably above all other things, I am interested as a writer in making a connection, interested in the parts of all of us that connect.

I feel like anytime you write about people in an honest way, you can find connections to any issue you would like.

I'm constantly having to check my conscience about what I'm writing and the responsibility of what I'm saying.

When I'm writing for Esquire, my conscious thought is, I'm not writing for American Scholar.

I've never really worked out this thought, and I don't know if I'm really conscious of it, but I can see there's an attraction about writing about a period that's over and isn't going to change colour while you look at it.

I wasn't really conscious about 'The 39 Clues' movie when I wrote 'The Black Circle.'

I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.

As soon as I finish meditating, I get a beautiful feeling of expanded consciousness. When I'm in this headspace I can make so much progress in my writing.

Keeping your head down and just writing is only part of the equation, so I surround myself with smart people to help sell my books.

I surround myself with fantastical things because it makes it a little easier to write fantastical stories.

After decades spent in rewrite rooms surrounded by other shouting writers, I discovered that I work best alone. I like being in charge of my time, working out the problems according to my own rhythms and being able to nap. That's a big one, the napping on demand!

I want to live in Kolkata; I don't want to live in Europe - I can't write there. I write in Bengali, and I need to be surrounded by the Bengali language and culture.

When you're writing a sketch, it has to be surrounded by a situation. It can't just be out of the air.