Quotes About Writing

I can't read novels while I'm writing a novel, because somebody's voice creeps in.

The best way to write a song is to think of something else and then the song kind of creeps in.

Fans always say they laughed and they cried while reading my books. And I tell them that I laughed and cried while writing them.

I had done 12 little romance books, and I decided I wanted to move into crime fiction.

It wasn't a decision to become a writer. I wanted to become a writer of crime fiction. I was very specific.

I have the same criteria for choosing roles as I have always had: fantastic writing and complicated characters.

No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.

A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!

I am a writer. Being critical is a writer's responsibility.

You have to take your ego out of it and say, do I want people to be obsequious to me or do I want to write good books? If it's the latter, you have to take criticism. It's annoying, but that's how to do good stuff; listen to other people.

If someone is going to criticize what you've written and you believe in what you've written then you should respond.

Getting your writing criticized can be a lot like getting skinned, and you respond to it just as enthusiastically.

TV critics, who traditionally hate television and make their living writing about it, often didn't like what I did on the air.

I think that I had read so much fiction that the craft itself sort of sank into me. I didn't read any 'how to' books or attend any popular-fiction-writing classes or have a critique group. For many years into my writing, I didn't even know another author. For me, a lot of reading was the best teacher.

I'm not aware of a cadence when writing, but I hear it after. I write in longhand, and that helps. You're closer to it, and you have to cross things out. You put a line through it, but it's still there. You might need it. When you erase a line on a computer, it's gone forever.

I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.

I'm crushed by the responsibility of writing a satirical book.

I know it's working when I'm writing a book if I'm laughing or crying.

I've always looked upon research as an opportunity to satisfy my curiosity. But the other side of the coin is one must not be so caught up in it that one never gets the book written.

A curious thing about this rarefied world is that bloggers are almost unfailingly contemptuous toward everyone except one another.

Like many writers, I'm usually more interested in reading about authors than their actual works. We're more curious to know how they were written than what they are like to read.

I'm always curious about other writers' routines.

Screenplays are the currency of Hollywood.

There's more than enough in the world I am currently writing about to last for several lifetimes of writing.