Quotes About Writing

Write what you really care about. Write what you want to say because that is the experience that always rates as genuine on the page.

I graduated from college in 2014 and started freelance writing. I'd write anything that paid, including filling local events calendars for hourly rates.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

When you are a writer, the assist-to-turnover ratio... there are a lot more turnovers than assists.

I'm not rational enough to be a good journalist.

But when it comes to writing the thing that I've sort of been thinking about lately, is why? You know, is it rational? Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do.

With writing, you really have to have faith. You have to have some sort of confidence that if you keep at it, you will get where you need to go, because there are so many points where a rational person would quit.

I would never have written 'Trainspotting' if it hadn't been for this album, 'Raw Power,' and 'Metallic K.O.'

In writing fiction, I can be free. I can use my life. The raw material is my experiences.

Ray Bradbury taught me the importance of metaphor and simile and poetic style.

If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want.

My literary heroes all wrote about L.A.: Joseph Wambaugh, Ross Macdonald, and Raymond Chandler were the three writers that made me want to be a writer.

Raymond Carver is good. I think he'll be appreciated more and more. He's an easy writer to imitate.

You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don't know everything about it. You can't.

Writing is a lonely job unless you're a drinker, in which case you always have a friend within reach.

It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is to continue to challenge myself.

But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.

There are writers who pour out words, concepts that sound really important but that basically say nothing. I always tried to be as concise as possible, all to try and reach everyone, but especially the simple people, those who needed to be reached more than anyone else.

What's important about me is that I really have, in ways I never could have foreseen when I was young, a writing career that's reached a lot of different places.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

Having reached the halfway mark in the alphabet, my prime focus is on writing each new book as well as I can.

I was always enjoying the moment. Acting, writing, looking for roles and getting involved with people and trying to create something that would be entertaining to people. With 'E.R.,' we were all very lucky to get this combination of people together in the right story in the right way to take it to the level it has reached.

For someone who wants to write a story, they should go on thinking about the story. When it comes up to a level, where it has reached your neck that's when you should go about writing it.

With 'Ilustrado,' I set out to change the way we read literature, and I think I failed spectacularly. In fact, I know I failed. In reaching further than I could, I may not have produced a life- or literature-changing book, but I did produce one I am proud of.