Quotes About Writing

I end up writing something every day, since I develop six or seven things at the same time - soccer columns, this and that.

I have a great deal of empathy for anyone who's having a hard time. I believe this ability to see another's viewpoint has served me well as a writer.

Each of my books took roughly one and a half years to write. Some may have taken a shorter time to write the draft and a longer time to revise, while others were the opposite.

Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme, Happy to catch me, just at dinner-time.

In the same way that Shakespeare was writing very much for his time, he was also unearthing observations that would last for generations beyond him.

I'm always wondering what is the job that gives the writer the most amount of time to write. I still don't know what the answer is as someone who has taught and is now working at a grocery store.

My sorrow is I used to read all the time and now, as a writer, I don't have the time to read.

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.

I don't have the courage not to write all the time.

You can't live and write at the same time.

When we're writing anything, we're bearing witness to the time we live in and how it's different from any other time in history.

Keeping a diary is advanced-level living. I spend way too much time trying not to curl up in the corner like a giant fetus & weep to keep a diary.

Trends come and go, and if you try to latch onto a trend it will likely be passé by the time you have completed your manuscript.

I think, if you want to grow a novelist, for that person to have a lot of boring time trying to entertain themselves is very important.

My writing process has changed because it's harder to find uninterrupted time.

When I began writing, it was a cosmic thing: Inspiration! Wham! Short spurts of time when I felt out of touch with reality, temporarily insane and the result: a song!

I became a full-time writer in 1993 and have been very happy, insofar as anybody is, since.

The writing day can be, in some ways, too short, but it's actually a long series of hours, for months at a time, and there is a stillness there.

For 10 or 11 years, I had my kids, I wrote four or five books, and I was working all the damn time.

I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good at it.

My father really taught me that you really develop the habit of writing and you sit down at the same time every day, you don't wait for inspiration.

Can you write a book and have children at the same time? Yes, if you're content to do it very very slowly.

I was quite shy. I used to write stories all the time, and I think that was a worry for my parents.