Quotes About Writing

The great break of my literary career was going to law school.

If I'm in a state about a book, I'll get up at 6 A.M. and write before breakfast, but usually I'll start afterwards and then work a full day with a break for lunch.

When I'm working on a novel, I generally do write every day, but in between those marathons, I take breaks. My brain needs time to recharge.

Well, I think some people are very happy in retirement. And in a year and a half I'm going to see how happy I feel in retirement. I'm just going to not work quite so hard, but I'll continue to write as long as God gives me breath.

Outside of family, writing is essential. To me, it's like breathing.

Writing a novel isn't like building a brick wall. You don't figure out how to do it, and then it gets easier each time because you know what you're doing. With writing a novel, you have to figure it out each time. Each time you start over, you just have the language and the idea and the hope.

I first encountered Bradbury's writing when I was pretty young. He's a great bridge author between young-adult fiction and literature.

In my brief writing life, it means I am still lucky that I have at least one more novel to complete. I do not expect that a story will arrive just because it is time to write another novel. It doesn't happen that way.

Anthony Powell taught me to write; he has such brilliant control of the mechanics of the novel.

It's brilliant there are so many writer-performers around.

Sam Shepard is a brilliant writer.

There are two places that are hard to write about. A place like Britain, England in particular, which has been written about by everybody, and then the place that's never been written about.

In high school, I was doing my magazine 'Rookie' and a lot of writing, and I became a little less interested in the fashion world. I was approached by an agent for writing, and I said I wanted to act as well. They sent me scripts, and then I got my first Broadway play, 'This Is Our Youth'.

Brooklyn is kind of my writer's retreat.

There are writers out there who say they're writing a second series, and then you pick it up and it feels exactly the same, only the lead character is blonde instead of brunette.

When I'm doing the brute work, I do it early in the morning; that's the best time for me to get the stuff down on the page.

Either you've got the bug, or you haven't. There are many things I'd rather be doing than writing a book.

I'd go so far as to say I was bullied into writing, but sometimes you need that.

I would write these novels about bullies in school: 'The Bullies: a Novel.'

Without great writing, you've got a bunch of actors bumping into each other.

I like writing for movies. It's nice to be alone working on fiction in your room, and then it's nice to be in a room with a bunch of people working on a movie.

It takes me a long time to write, and I trust myself, so I write very sparsely, so when I do, I know it's good, you know what I mean? Rather than writing a whole bunch and having to sort out what's good and what's not.

It is my greatest wish to teach children what I now believe: that writing is not a burden but a joy.

A lot of young-adult authors, great ones, have tried their hands at literary fiction, and not a lot of them have succeeded. Not even Roald Dahl could switch-hit, and not for lack of trying.