Quotes About Writing

I have no desire to write fiction. I did what I did, and it's done. There's more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date.

Much of my publishing life was consumed by the memoirs of movie stars - or by attempts to get them to write a memoir.

Writers keep writing and publishers publishing - it never grows boring.

Publishing is not my world.

Publishing a novel was such a proud thing for me. When I was a kid, I used to say to my mum and dad, 'I'm going to write a book. You'll see.' So when I did ,and it was published, and people liked it, it was great.

Getting a beginner publishing deal really helped me gain the skills. I just kept writing and writing. You just take everything out of life and turn it into an idea or a melody or a song and find the best writers you can to write with that fit you and know what you want to do.

When I got my first publishing deal, I felt some responsibility to try to write with the people that they were asking me to write with.

I hadn't meant to do the pattern of publishing short stories and then a novel. I thought, 'I'm a novelist. I know it.' But you have to kind of write a lot of bad novels before you can write a good one, I think, so I did that. But meanwhile, I loved the short stories I did.

Before the arrival of my first son, I gave up on the moribund business of magazine publishing, where I had long dreamed of a career, and went to work in advertising. That I could be paid great money to write was incredibly hard to believe.

Publishing a book is a very different thing than writing one.

I've never liked the publishing world's determination to pigeonhole every writer into a genre.

When I was doing it, I just thought, 'I'm going to do this because it's fun.' I wasn't writing for a publisher or a publishing model; I didn't really think about it, but then, somehow, it worked out in my favor.

I was 17 when I wrote a collection of short stories and wanted it published but it didn't happen. A lot of publishing houses don't allow young authors to enter into writing segments.

I didn't do anything but write for six months after I got my publishing deal. That was just trying to get better and figure out my sound and the way I like to do it.

I worked for a publishing company in Hollywood.

There are plenty of secondary characters that I had always hoped to write, but I don't know if it will ever happen. The way contracts work, if you leave one publishing house for another, the characters tend to stay with the previous publishing house.

There's a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off.

Most people who are trying to write kind of sit in their basements and pull it out of their imaginations.

If the day gets really bad, I can always pull out fan mail. Who else gets mail where kids write to you and say, 'Dear Mr. Scieszka, we were supposed to write to our favorite author, but Roald Dahl is dead. So I'm writing to you.'

I don't know if I have a memory of not thinking I was a writer - it goes that far back. I went to law school because I didn't know how to earn a living otherwise. I tried to ignore the pull, but it wouldn't let me.

I love writing essays and articles, so it's hard for me to resist taking assignments that inevitably pull me away from larger projects.

I write all over the house. Because I write in longhand, I can go anywhere I want... I have some notebooks here and there, and then I type it in and pull it out, and I do the revisions all over the place.

Every writer dreams of having the ability to hold forth for 8,000 words and pull all these different forms together: history, reportage, journalism. That was all I really wanted, and 'The Atlantic' was my first high-profile opportunity.

I'm not a big believer in the idea of genre - I'm a fan of any writer who can pull me into compelling characters and stories - but I can't imagine I'll start writing domestic dramas any time soon.