Quotes About Writing

To me, the pinnacle of my career is writing for youth. I can die happy: I have succeeded in doing what I have always wanted to do.

The writer's goal is to try to make it frightening without describing it too much, and yet not making it so grey that you don't know what's going on... Your imagination can imagine all sorts of really horrible things, and if you're able to prolong that feeling, then you've succeeded.

Fiction is harder for me than nonfiction - more gratifying, as a result, when it succeeds.

I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

Having a support system is huge for writers. My parents were always encouraging and told me they were behind me, whether or not I made it in the business. My wife was always there for my successes and failures.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

Although the odds are you're not gonna get the acting job you go out for, it's easier to successfully audition than it is to sit down for a few months and write a movie that's going to actually sell.

I often have the impression that the book I've just finished isn't satisfied: that it rejects me because I haven't successfully completed it. Because there is no going back, I'm forced to begin a new book so I can finally complete the previous one.

In general, I think comedy is more difficult to write, to direct, and to act successfully.

The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing.

I don't deal with writer's block, I don't allow myself to believe that there is such a thing. I think that there are good days and a lot more less good days.

They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there's such a thing as believability when you're writing a novel.

You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life; the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.

I just have to trust that the story is going to shake out in such a way that's going to be palatable to readers.

When I was writing 'You Suck,' in 2006, I constructed the diction of the book's narrator, perky Goth girl Abby Normal, from what I read on Goth blog sites.

I love to play guitar. I've been writing my own songs on the axe since I was nine years old. I suck at leads.

I've written for every medium except poetry, at which I suck.

When I realized that people actually wrote comics, that it was a job people could do, I thought, 'Gee, these things are only 17 pages long! I could probably finish one of those and find out whether I suck before I've spent five years of my life on it.' In stumbling into comics that way, I discovered that I loved the form.

Generally, screenplays suck.

I hate prologues because they're kind of gimmicks to suck you in.

I'm not that great of a speaker. I don't like watching my own interviews. I think I suck at talking, but one thing I can do is move my pen, and if that's how I gotta speak to my daughter, then let me do that.

I try to write for women, but I suck at it. I really do.

Allowing yourself to suck is the hard part of writing music. If you allow yourself to suck, you will probably write something better.

I've written plenty of scripts that sucked.