Quotes About Writing

When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It's not my business whether people like or dislike it.

There is sometimes a feeling in crime fiction that good writing gets in the way of story. I have never felt that way. All you have is language. Why write beneath yourself? It's an act of respect for the reader as much as yourself.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

I want a kiss to be so believable it gives the reader shivers.

But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that.

If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations.

When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader.

Humour is a fine line to walk in poetry, as in fiction. I just think it's harder to write. It's harder to keep the respect of the reader too.

I do think I was trying to entertain the reader more than I was trying to purge myself.

But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.

The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it's about us, it's about the reader.

It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the reader's opportunities to follow it at every step.

I was quite a reader before I became a writer.

Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself. I always failed. I would freeze up.

Early on, a story's meaning and rationale seem pretty obvious, but then, as I write it, I realize that I know the meaning/rationale too well, which means that the reader will also know it - and so things have to be ramped up.

No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.

My greatest fear is disappointing the reader, so each book has to be better than the one before.

Why did I become a writer? Because I grew up in New York City, and there were seven newspapers in New York City, and my family was an inveterate reader of newspapers and I loved holding a paper in my hand. It was something sacred.

My influence is probably more from American crime writers than any Europeans. And I hardly read any Scandinavian crime before I started writing myself. I wasn't a great crime reader to begin with.

I've always been a reader and a writer.

Poetry and prose are of equal importance to me as a reader, and there doesn't seem to be much difference in my own writing.

I'm a writer because I love reading. I love the conversation between a reader and a writer, and that it all takes place in a book-sort of a neutral ground. A writer puts down the words, and a reader interprets the words, and every reader will read a book differently. I love that.

I can give advice to anyone interested in writing in one word: Read! I think it's much more important to be a reader than to be a writer!

I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.