Quotes About Writing

Before I start, I create a set list that I listen to while I'm writing. For 'Intimate Apparel,' I loaded Erik Satie, Scott Joplin, klezmer music, and the American jazz performer and composer Reginald Robinson.

Like, your body has to get used to being in front of people. Like - and you have to be like - you have to be kind of a ham, you know? Like, the thing about writers is they're generally self - comedy writers - self-loathing, sort of play small. And as a, like, performer, you have to think like a comedy writer but act like a performer.

I'm a better writer than a performer. Everyone wants to feel like they're a bit of a polymath, and I certainly feel that.

There's no getting around it: Writing is hard, while working with young performers is nearly always a joy.

I'm more interested in writing than in performing.

If I had to give up everything else and keep just one aspect of the job, I'd have to keep writing because I love it. Yes, I enjoy performing, too. But I couldn't give up writing material.

Before I even knew what that half of my family did, I was interested in performing. I remember being seven years old and up on a stage and loving it. I've always adored it. Not just acting, but the whole process of writing and directing movies, everything that has to do with that part of life. Maybe it's in my blood.

As long as I am given the opportunity to keep performing and keep exploring in whatever medium, I'll be happy. As long as I get to spend time with my family, I'll be happy. As long as I can write in some form, I'll be happy. It is the essential things like that I equate with happiness.

It's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing. I'm not a musician. I never thought of performing in a rock n' roll band. I was just drawn in. It was like being called to duty - I was called to duty, and I did my duty as best as I could.

I started performing in college, but I wasn't writing a lot.

I've always been a geek, so I've always used the Internet, perhaps at first for autopromotion, as many authors do.

I like to think of myself as an unmediated novelist - or perhaps a national novelist.

The inspiration to write? Perhaps it's not so much inspiration, as a NEED to write. I get itchy and guilty and dissatisfied when I haven't written for a while. Ideas come to me and need to be written down.

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.

Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story.

When you are working on a script, the story itself is not difficult. You say this would happen and then this, resulting perhaps in this. And the dialogue you make as true as you can.

Actually, the 14 novels were written over a period of just over 6 years.

I'll have periods when I write and periods when I don't. But you don't want it to become a discipline, really. If it becomes a discipline, it becomes a chore, and that's no good. To make art you need to be inspired.

Sometimes in writing you have difficult periods and then other times it just flows.

I used to write exclusively with one particular Montblanc fountain pen, although lately I have had to use a roller-tip fountain pen, because I find it harder and harder to control the fine muscles of my right hand during prolonged periods of work. I buy boxes of Deluxe Uni-ball pens, use them until they start to drag, and then change.

More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.

I have had periods when I've overused a word, 'candent' being one example, but I'm trying not to do that any more.

I often feel like not writing! Sometimes I overcome it by just sitting there until writing happens. Sometimes I don't write, because books often need periods of percolation.