Quotes About Writing

I really just like to be at a desk.

I'm writing a book, and there's not even space for a desk in our home. So I spent my hard-earned book money and rented the small apartment downstairs from us.

I'm always writing, even when I'm not at my desk. I write on my hands. I used to write on my kids' hands, too, but they don't let me any more. When I'm driving I sometimes write all the way up my arms.

I got so I simply gagged everytime I sat before my desk to write an ad.

Part of making art is learning how you make it best. I'm not great at sitting down at a desk and writing for three hours. I write best verbally, talking through an idea with people, so I do my best work when I collaborate.

Sometimes, when I'm sitting at my desk for long hours and nothing's coming to me, I remember my fifth-grade teacher, the way her eyes lit up when she said, 'This is really good.'

So with 'There Will Be Blood,' I didn't even really feel like I was adapting a book. I was just desperate to find stuff to write.

When I was writing Shadow and Bone,' I really had no confidence as a writer. I had never finished a book before and I desperately wanted to finish a book for the first time.

If you're writing about angry people, you use the language of anger. If you're writing about desperate people, you use the language of desperation.

I realize that the wish to write in a new language derives from a kind of desperation.

I'm impossible when a book is taking shape. Well, actually, I'm despicable.

I've never thought of myself as a writer. I still don't, despite all the writing I've done.

I've always known when I start a story what the last line is. It's always been the case, since the first story I ever wrote. I don't know how it's going to get there, but I seem to need the destination. I need to know where I end up. It never changes, ever.

A writer's job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.

I just write what comes along. I don't have a detailed master plan.

If we got writing assignments in English class to make up a story, that was when the glimmer of creativity popped out. That was way more interesting to me than writing down my life details.

When you're in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you're writing about it.

Writing in public gives you that access to a junkyard of details all around you.

Whenever I'm writing a book, small details from my life always creep in.

No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story.

Before I write, I like to read obits in 'The Times' because they're well written, and I like the little details. It gets the energy going in the morning. I really like the obits of old Hollywood actors and actresses.

Writing is hard. It takes commitment and determination and a good part talent. It's not an afterthought, an addendum - it's a career.

All writers are forced to live within deadlines, and deadlines determine how good they can be.

Most writers tend to get worse rather than better. I'm determined to be one that gets better.