Quotes About Writing

I'm a writer, so I like dissecting things.

I'm not writing a Ph.D. Dissertation.

I try not to think of actors as I'm writing because I think you do them a disservice by writing for things they've already done.

I'm not sure I can write about America for the same reason I'm not sure I can write about adults - I have no critical distance on either place.

If you are writing something, you automatically create a certain distance. It can be very little. Even within the same city you imaginatively have a certain distance from your subject, and at the same time, you have to have a connection.

I need a distance to my characters when I write.

I don't make that hard and fast distinction between political and nonpolitical writing. I write about what bothers me.

I tend to write in coffee shops and restaurants with friends of mine because if I'm at home, I get distracted by the television or the cats or my husband, or... you know - all of those things that make it easy to procrastinate.

I don't have any of the modern electronics at all. I know the Internet would be a distraction. I would see things that interested me and never get back to writing.

I never listen to music when I write. It's too much of a distraction.

Reading good books is one distraction that will help you become a better writer. And writing - that's the thing - writing is what will really make you a better writer. Write bad stories until you begin to write so-so stories, which might, if you keep at it, turn to writing good stories.

If I'm writing a book or doing something where I've got a lot of time at home, then cooking is always a really good distraction for me from what I've got to do.

I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.

I'm not sure what my material would have been if I'd have started earlier. I probably would have started with 'Damsels in Distress' kinds of films because that's the kind of comedy I was writing in college. So I didn't really have any life experience to work off of.

95% of the album is my writing, by choice, because it seems to be what the distributors want.

In writing 'The Humans,' I obsessed over the financial district and the architecture.

I always, by an involuntary act of defensiveness, return to my everyday self: so, I find, have I withdrawn from writing about experiences which have most closely concerned and disturbed me. I have been deflected by my own reticence.

There is pressure when you have a very big book like 'Shadow Divers' to follow up with something big. But you can't let that pressure determine what you do. You just look for the best stories, and when you find a great one, you tell it.

The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.

The more screenwriting you do, the more you become aware that particular scenes aren't going to end up in the movie because they're too expensive. That has perhaps changed the way I think about writing novels, actually, because now I write expensive scenes whenever I can.

I've experienced writer's block, but never for more than a few days.

I think every writer will tell you that their characters are always partially themselves: who I am and what I've experienced. It's always there in part of my characters.

I tend to write from a personal place, and most of the time when I'm writing by myself, it's coming from something I've experienced.

I'm writing constantly about all my crazy experiences across the world, so I have a lot of music I've already written.