Quotes About Writing

If something pops in my mind and it's easy, I write it.

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

Writing books that people want to read is helpful - my most successful book is my only police procedural, a very popular subgenre of the very popular crime fiction genre.

I could tell it was a popular move as a writer to walk down the bass lines while you were writing a song.

I want to be a popular novelist who's also serious, or a serious novelist who's also very accessible.

I'm writing exactly the kinds of books I like to write. And they're the kinds of books I like to read. They're popular commercial fiction. That's what they are.

Contemporary fiction is the hardest for me because I am not really in the popular culture - I don't watch TV.

You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer.

A misconception that exists in the eyes of the general reading population is that authors make truckloads of money.

My joking answer to this question is that I leave a bowl of milk out on the back porch every night for the Idea Fairy. In the morning, the milk is gone and there's a brand-new shiny idea by the bowl.

I do not think I will ever write screenplays based on my books. I would not know what to cut out and what portions to keep. I like all the characters I have created. I cannot imagine chopping them off.

Not only are Christians writing about Jesus, but also Communists, Jews, atheists and agnostics are taking up their pens to paint a portrait of Jesus.

I'm ashamed to say, I've done hideous pen portraits of people I don't like in my novels. And they'll say, 'Oh, that person was hideous,' and I'm nodding, and I'm thinking, 'It's you, you fool!'

The more you put out there, the more you have to resolve. 'Air' is the most literary comic I've written so far, and that poses problems.

I'm the female Bob Woodward! If I were a liberal, I couldn't write another book. I'd be so busy collecting awards! I'd be posing for the cover of 'Vanity Fair!'

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing. I did that with 'World's Fair,' as with all of them. The inventions of the book come as discoveries.

So writing is a very, very difficult position to obtain... and retain.

Sometimes you're not even sure which of your stories were failures. There are things I've written that I thought were complete catastrophes when I finished with them that have gone on to generate some of my most positive feedback.

I'm not the 'chosen one.' I'm just one of many who have been given gifts. I can write. I can bloviate on TV. So I'm trying to use the gifts in a positive way. And I believe that's all directed. And that's why I'm here on the planet.

I try to be very honest in my writing. It's amazing, though, to think that people are responding to what we do, but it's okay if they're responding in a positive way too, because I think just creating anything at all to put out there is a gift.

I write about humility, because it's something I hope I one day actually possess.

We writers of series fiction tend to idealize ourselves in our characters, giving them attributes we wish we possessed and ever more interesting lives.

As I was writing 'Insidious 3' I started to fall in love with the characters and the story. I became very possessive of it and I didn't want someone else to do it.

The possibilities are infinite with new writing; every time you open a new script, there's no limit to what it might contain.