Quotes About Writing

My friends and I make great fun of the fact that I was labeled the so-called spokesperson for the generation. I don't think many writers write from that perspective. I'm sure John Updike doesn't sit around thinking, Boy, have I got the number on suburbia. He'd be horrified if he thought that was all he was up to.

It took me years and years to realize a very simple thing, which is that when you write fiction you're raising questions, and a lot of people think you're playing a little game with them and that actually you know the answers to the questions. They read your question. They don't know how to answer correctly. And they think that if they could only meet you personally and look into your eyes, you could give them the answers.

I do know happy marriages, including mine. But why write about something like that? I can't imagine writing, without irony, about people who are happy all the time.

I don't work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream--now I'm on this rock, now I'm on this rock, now I'm on this rock. In the context of a story, a fairly boring thought in a character's head can work better than a brilliant one, and a brilliantly laid-out structure can be so much worse for a story than one that is more haphazard.

I only have a certain bag of tricks. And that's why little things, like punctuation, make such a big difference. The dash I've always relied on hugely. I know I use it even in borderline cases, where technically it isn't correct. But it moves me through the initial draft of the text, and I let a lot of my dashes stay.

I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.

His optimistic dream of the great American adventure was what made his writing alive, his belief in the essential joyousness of following his own emotions and being excited by the promise of life.

But I've come to realize writing's not a noble calling. Like you said, it's all about marketing, isn't it?

I decided to write Westerns because there was a terrific market for Westerns in the '50s. There were a lot of pulp magazines, like 'Dime Western' and '10 Story Western' that were still being published. The better ones paid two cents a word. And I thought, 'I like Westerns.'

I haven't read a lot of Westerns. But I wrote a Western. The influences were all cinematic.

Years ago, when I was writing westerns, other writers who were friends of mine wanted me to collaborate with them. And it just didn't work.

A writer can write in an attic, or on top of a bus. Or with a sharp stick in some wet cement. To act, an actor has to have words. A stage. a camera turning.

At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind. Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself. I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration.

My first novel, 'The Lions of Lucerne,' just poured out of me. It was an amazing feeling of accomplishment. My biggest fear and therefore my biggest obstacle to becoming an author had been, 'What if I spend all that time and the book is no good?'

I characterize myself a little bit as a reluctant filmmaker. I learned from watching my friend in college stay up late at night, at 2 A.M., just to get the lighting right, and I thought, 'You know what, if that's what it's going to be like, I think I'm just going to write,' and I did that.

My writing became more and more minimalist. In the end, I couldn't write at all. For seven or eight years, I hardly wrote. But then I had a revelation. What if I did the opposite? What if, when a sentence or a scene was bad, I expanded it, and poured in more and more? After I started to do that, I became free in my writing.

There are two questions that you ask yourself as a writer, and one of them is, 'But why?' The question that takes the book forward is, 'What if? What if x y or z happened? How would those characters react?'

As a writer, you always try to imagine, 'What if I were in a situation like this? How would I react?'

Write with abandon and no constraints for first draft. Cut brutally and save in separate files on second draft. Add conflict; don't be afraid to make your characters suffer. Read what you love. Write what you love. Love.

There's this idea that if you want to write, you shouldn't study literature because then you're dissecting what you love, and you should keep your love of literature pure. I think that's kind of silly.

Some writers are more natural public performers than others; personally I find it quite strange giving interviews. But everyone has parts of their job that they like more than others. You can't complain if you get to do what you love doing most of the time, can you?

I think that if you write what you love to read, that will be what your audience wants to read, too.

I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.

In writing the history of a disease, every philosophical hypothesis whatsoever, that has previously occupied the mind of the author, should lie in abeyance.