Quotes About Writing

I do a great deal of research - particularly in the apartments of tall blondes.

I think what happens is you write how you grew up. And I was born on the prairie, and so everything is kind of spare on the prairie. And so I'm just used to writing in that way. 'Sarah, Plain and Tall' was that way. And most of my fiction is. I like writing small pieces. Somehow it just suits me.

I know exactly what it's like to stand on top of a tall building or in a high place and look down and go, 'Ohhhh my God.' I try to get into that place every time I write a scene like that. And definitely when I write the action scenes, I get overheated and my heart goes really fast. I get very involved.

As I was writing, I realised I wasn't sufficiently extrovert to gather enough interesting souls with tall tales around me. I was no Louis Theroux. But neither was I interested in exploring my inner life in public, in the manner of a Jonathan Raban.

I know white clothing is supposed to enhance that summer glow, but writers don't tan.

Usually, by the time I hit 'save' before taking a nap, my word count has gone down, but the world I'm creating feels more tangible than it did before.

I admit my reading time is limited because I can write in the situations and places where people usually read. But reading is the fuel - it's inspiring - so I try to keep the tank full. What happens most of the time is I binge read. I will put aside a day or two to do nothing but read.

A method involving apparent obscurity is surely justified when it is the clearest, the simplest, the only method possible of saying in full what the writer has to say

Our reaction against the sentimentality embodied in Victorian and post-Victorian writing was so resolute writers came to believe that the further from sentimentality we got, the truer the art. That was a mistake. ...if you are not risking sentimentality, you are not close to your inner self.

Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.

To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance-- not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write.

In truth, the writer's problems are usually psychological, like everyone else's.

Self-acceptance through writing is no different than self-acceptance through time.

You're goddamn paranoid. You should see someone about that." "I tried, but she kept writing things down. It made me more paranoid.

would like to thank his colleagues, particularly Andrin and Helen, for their generous encouragement in his book-writing. Finally, he is most grateful to Christina, who, against all his instincts, got him to buy a house on a hill in the middle of nowhere. It has turned out to be a place in the middle of somewhere very special indeed, and a perfect place to write. And to his six-year-old daughter Zoe, who has taught him more than

The Apostrophe To grant possession to a singular noun, simply add an apostrophe and s: The student's love of punctuation is boundless. If a plural noun that already ends in s needs to become possessive, slap a single apostrophe on the end of that word:

[S]ometimes... quotation marks are an absolute crime against humanity.

The rules of punctuation seem arbitrary. How can they not, when an apostrophe looks like nothing in this world so much as a comma that can't keep its feet on the ground? Or when, by simply placing next to that wafting comma its twin, one creates (of all things) a quotation mark?

Thomas Wolfe] says that we are the sum of all the moments of our lives, and that, uh, anybody who sits down to write is gonna use the clay of their own life, that you can't avoid that.

I'm happy, I would say that I'm one of the happiest people I know but I've certainly had periods of profound sadness, depression and heartache and those are the kind of things that are interesting to me to write about.

Writing seems like the only job where what you think and feel really matters.

There's a big difference between us. I write non-fiction, you write fiction. I write truths that tell lies. You write lies that tell truths.

I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely. How appropriate that I write this to myself.

I once heard a writer say, 'It's easy to write a novel, you just slit your wrist and let it bleed on the pages.' She was right...Sophocles and Freud believed that we are defined by our fears. There's a lot of truth to that. When you share your greatest fears, your vulnerability, we bond in that honesty. We connect with each other and we don't feel so alone. And that's what books are really about. Connecting.