Quotes About Writing

Don't call me a journalist; I hate the word. It's pretentious!

Early on, I said to myself that I would like to write a kind of moral and spiritual history of a place. It sounds a little pretentious, I know. But that's really what I set for myself.

It's not easy keeping a diary. You have to be pretty committed.

The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.

Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.

I like writing my own material - I'm pretty good at it.

I routinely oscillate between exultation and despair. Maybe at the end of the day I feel pretty good about what I've written, but the next morning I see that it's crap. Then I start again - make a new outline, do some more research, try to rethink the whole question.

As a writer, I think the greatest danger would be self-censorship.

Acting is contained - you act for three months, then leave it - but writing is the act of creation. Writing is dangerous.

I was not born into the world of the stuntman and the daredevil; I was born into the world of theater and writing and sculpting and classical music.

When I first started out writing the 'Darkness' books, there was, at least in my mind, a certain sort of rulebook we had to follow.

You have to be careful not to use anything too colloquial or you date the book.

I have a six-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter, so I write when they are at school and pre-school, or when I have a babysitter.

My first book was an open letter to my three daughters.

Writing a screenplay is daunting for sure, but I think that Hollywood needs them, so if you can manage to do that, there's certainly a value within it.

On the whole, I rather disapprove of cookbooks, except for the literary ones, like Elizabeth David's.

I would probably do anything with David Mamet. He's so great. I just love his writing.

David Sedaris is so good that it makes me mad.

Sloane Crosley and David Sedaris are two of my favorite writers; they're the kind of writers who make you feel like, 'I can do this. I want to do this.'

I just write from dawn to dusk.

In this day and age, you can write anywhere in the world. You can really live anywhere and have the same career.

I was a sound engineer. That was my day job when I started writing.

If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.

I have a day job where I make money and satisfy my self-esteem. Writing is for fun, and I want to keep it that way.