Quotes About Writing

James Salter has talents on the page we novelists would sell souls to the devil for.

Cheever constantly voiced doubts about his writing. Reading 'The Naked and the Dead' made him despair of his own 'confined talents.'

I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales.

Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience. It's like the characters have come alive and are sitting on my shoulder talking to me, telling me their tales.

Fairy tales and folk tales have always played a role in my writing in one way or another.

Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else.

I certainly have been writing stories that are hard science fiction, that are very reminiscent of 'Golden Age tales' from the '40s and '50s. I've also written stories that are very high fantasy that are the direct opposite of that style.

I am not an actor. Yes, every so often I appear on talk shows to promote something I've written, and I enjoy doing so because I have a lot of stories to tell, and I like making audiences laugh. But that's not acting. That's just me being me.

It used to be you sat up in your attic and wrote and went down to a local cafe and talked with people there.

So I went out and bought myself a copy of the Writer and Artist Yearbook, bought lots of magazines and got on the phone and talked to editors about ideas for stories. Pretty soon I found myself hired to do interviews and articles and went off and did them.

I decided to write a book primarily because people talked me into it.

Me and Norman Mailer have talked about how hard it is in America to get better. Especially at writing.

My Girl Scout leader. She told me if I listened more and talked less, I could grow up to be a good writer. I thought that was interesting advice at age 12.

I wanted to write a story about my struggles with depression and mental health. It's an issue that needs to be talked about more.

I've talked with friends about this: when you write about yourself, that's what people connect to. When you write a sermon or a lesson, that may not reach people. I've learned a lot from people who have been writing about themselves.

I read the script first to get the perspective on the whole story, the writing, and how the character I'm auditioning for is talked about by other people or relates to other people; from there, I go into the sides.

Most of the time, when I'm writing, I'm writing for myself. I'm thinking, 'What will my character say at this time? What will come out of her mouth?' I create individuals so real to me, I sometimes start talking to them. Then I let them loose on the page.

If you want to write about people, you can make it up. But if you spend time talking to someone and examining what it is you want to write about, you discover a level of detail that you wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

I have a hard time with people who say they write for children but they don't really like children. I love children. I love talking with them.

When finally I mustered the courage to tell a novelist friend that I was talking to editors about a biography, her reply was, 'Oh, that's okay. That's not a real book.'

When I wrote about media and technology, I had a lot of lonely, even intimate book talks. Since writing about dogs, I have a lot of company at book signings.

The writer crafts their ideal world. In my world, everyone has really long conversations or just picks apart pop culture to death and everyone talks in monologue.

If you want to know why all writers are a little crazy read 'The Midnight Disease' by Alice W. Flaherty. She talks about the drive to write, writer's block, and the creative brain. I know what's wrong with me!

Everyone talks about the gags, but the most difficult thing is coming up with the stories. You have to learn to do that for sitcoms.