Quotes About Writing

Books are acts of composition: you compose them. You make music: the music is called fiction.

I don't know how it is for people who write fiction or literature, but for me, when I'm writing music, especially with this album, I felt compelled to hold up my end of the conversation. I want people to connect deeper with it.

Writing fiction is the 'job' I try to keep at the center of things. The movie stuff has been a wonderful accident, though not entirely bizarre, either, as I have done some work in film before, and even directed a ridiculous, cable-access feature back in my 20s.

When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again.

I like going back and writing fiction.

It's part of a cycle of stories I'm writing where I deconstruct classic science fiction.

Fiction came quite a while later. I began with short stories and fiction for children.

Poetry was my dirty little secret when I was a fiction writer at Iowa, and then fiction became my dirty little secret when I started writing more poetry and working for 'Rookie'.

Part of being a fiction writer is being able to imagine how someone else is thinking and feeling. I think I've always been good at that.

When you have a novel set in a fictional history, you still should get your history right.

Each day I feel a little differently; some times I try to write something that's fictitious and then there's other times where I try to write something that's true.

I feel that one of the fields that I need to learn a lot is screenwriting. I used to write my own screenplays, but it's just that I remember that at that time, I was saying to myself, 'I wish one day I will meet a screenwriter that will help me because I feel that I need to learn.'

When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.

I thought, well I can do that. I couldn't be bothered writing a book review, because I'd have to read the book, I haven't got time to read a whole book for a fifty dollar write-up.

My fights and arguments, even with God, went down on paper.

Listen to advice. You don't know how many writer's conferences I've taught at where at least half the audience fights all the conventions of the field.

Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.

I usually write things in my head before I ever write them down. When I write it out, usually I've already figured out what it is I'm trying to do.

I've wanted to write comics ever since I figured out it was a job.

I liked writing before I figured out I liked acting.

I had been offered a six-figure deal to write two cookery books. Six figures, at just 23.

People didn't like me; I was loud and aggressive. People can take it from a 42-year-old, but when you're a little kid, and people are like, 'You're loud and awful,' you think, 'I guess I am awful,' so writing and figuring out how to put things into words was the way I felt better.

I have always written. I was one of those kids who would always fill exercise books with girls and telepathic ponies.

When we don't have all the details about our characters, we have to make it up to fill in all the details. So, for me, writing and acting go hand in hand.