Quotes About Writing

The most important thing is to live an interesting life. Keep your eyes, ears and heart open. Talk to people and visit interesting places, and don't forget to ask questions. To be a writer you need to drink in the world around you so it's always there in your head.

Write a little bit every day, each day. Visit it, every day - in other words, show up for work.

My days are filled with writing, reading, and being a mom. Some days, I get to visit schools around the country and talk about what it's like to be a writer. I often feel like I'm pretending, because it's still hard for me to believe it when I see someone holding a book that I've written.

The main characters for 'The Seer and the Sword' made an appearance one night and then haunted me for over five years before I began to write them down. Does that count as inspiration? For me, characters tend to show up, stay on to help with the work of writing their stories, and then occasionally deign to visit after a book is finished.

Part of my job as Children's Laureate is to visit schools and talk about my love of books and stories and encourage them all to do it as well - to read, to write, to never be afraid of their own voice. Because we all have something to say.

In order for me to write a scene, it's very important for me to see and experience everything with my own eyes, so yes, I was able to visit some remarkable houses and destinations while I was in China.

I was writing 'Outlander' for practise and didn't want anyone to know I was doing it. So I couldn't very well announce to my husband that I was quitting my job and abandoning him with three small children to visit Scotland to do research for a novel that I hadn't told him I was writing.

I knew as far back as 2001 that I would write a book called 'A Visit From the Goon Squad,' though I had no idea what kind of book it would be.

So, as a child in school, I used to write essays on how I spent my holiday or about a visit to a temple. I used to document small things and enjoyed the process of writing even then.

My sister and I visited Iceland in 2001, and I incorporated it into 'Pretty Little Liars.'

If one real working screenwriter had visited us in college and just said, 'This is what my day is like,' it would have been really helpful.

I do no writing while I'm in Belgrade visiting my grandma.

Before I liked to write, I liked to type. I remember visiting my grandmother Adele in Ponce Inlet, Florida, when I was three years old, and she had an IBM electric typewriter.

I began visiting Lima's prisons back in 2007, when my first novel, 'Lost City Radio,' was published in Peru.

Sitting with a deck of cards in your hand all day is an obsession. Visiting print shops and bookstores and libraries is an obsession. And writing about this is an obsession. I think, in general, most collectors are obsessed. I think the only form of a rationalized greed is when you're collecting something you are supposedly serious about.

I made my personal discovery of Emily Carr while visiting Victoria in 1981 to write a travel article. Immediately, her strong colors attracted me; her spunk fascinated me. Her down-to-earth voice in her writing appealed to me as authentic and original.

I did my degree in journalism, and I then went on to being a games journalist, reviewing and previewing games and writing about the industry, visiting and interviewing developers.

The way a small child might dream of visiting Disneyland, I dreamed of writing books. Never did I think my poems would become that.

Writing about joyful experiences for just three days can improve people's moods and decrease their visits to health centers a full three months later.

It's been noted that writing about the production of art is a masquerade or metaphor for writing about writing. This may be true, there are similarities - both the verbal and the visual represent the thing or the concept.

I'm a very visual person when it comes to writing music. I like to see something besides just a script, even if it's just a storyboard or pictures from the set.

I love writing picture books and story books because of the exciting, visual life that artists and illustrators give to them. And most of all, I love writing novels because of the inner, emotional journeys that they take me on. Hopefully, the reader comes with me!

Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can't do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating.

When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.