Quotes About Writing

I'm a working writer; this is my job. So it matters to me that it's good. I sweat over every word. I don't just vomit this stuff up. It's agony. The only thing that comes close is childbirth, except it's like being in labor for eighteen months.

One of the reasons I love writing for middle graders, besides their voracious appetite for books, is their deep concern for fairness and morality.

Essays just aren't my thing: no matter how hard I tried, it seemed I was always a bit average.

I always wrote. My parents are writers. It just seemed like something people did.

I took my writing seriously, and it seemed to pay off.

I very seldom, very seldom, even know what my characters look like.

I very seldom read back into what I've written.

When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away.

To me, great writing - and when you can really make something wonderful out of it as an actor - is when your character has a sense of self-awareness. It doesn't necessarily have to arc. It doesn't have to grow.

I actually really wish I had written 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying' as an unreliably narrated novel that is also a self-help book.

I do want to say the process of writing a novel is riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing.

I write from my life, my experience. I'm selfish that way.

The reason I'm a writer is to understand other people and myself more. The reason I'm a writer is to dramatize stories about human beings so that it improves my life. So that's a very selfish thing.

I am rich because I sell a lot of books, but it's not my drive.

Selling a book or story has never become absolutely automatic for me.

For many writers, selling a book is the ultimate dream.

I don't think anybody submits their first story and sells right away.

As an author, I love to know my book sells really well.

Once I decided I was happy with something, I'd try to send it off into the world, and either someone would want it exactly as it was, or it would remain in my notebook/laptop, and no one would ever see it. This is probably why I didn't work with an editor until I was 26. The solipsism!

My first album, I had to write everything. Nobody was going to send me stuff just because I had a little success.

Ideas for stories come to me based on my life, so who knows? If somebody sends me to become an astronaut, that's what I'll end up writing.

Through writing, one experiences something different to what one experiences with the five senses one has because language is a different metier.

I was an athlete, so I have kind of an athletic sensibility towards writing. I can work for many long hours without fatiguing.

I just knew I would be a writer. It just seemed the only sensible thing to do.