Quotes About Writing

You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it to the page. The page is jealous and tyrannical; the page is made of time and matter; the page always wins.

You don't need to be able to string a sentence together in a way that is elegant or even vaguely meaningful to produce a bestseller - as Dan Brown has demonstrated time and again.

I think about my films for a long time, maybe years, but I write them in days.

In a sense, being a full-time writer is less fun because there's no office to go to anymore, there's no set routine, there's no schedule. It can be quite isolating.

Overall, one of the things that excites me most about self-publishing is that the highest-value use of my time in promoting the books will be found in writing more of them.

Make sure you're realistic about what you can do, but if you have a good lead with something, making the plunge into full-time writing is the only way to go.

I kept going back while I was writing the novel - which never sold, may it rest in peace - and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.

I think if you spend much time dwelling on influence you can get self-conscious about every line you write. That's a great way to freeze up.

You write by sitting down and writing. There's no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he's disciplined, doesn't matter.

Writing can be either readable or precise, but not at the same time.

... but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood.

If you do something for the first time, you will always remember it. If your Dad has something to do with it, you write about it.

I think back when I was kind of a crappy writer, I really did know my time was better spent working and having adventures and seeing the world.

I've been used for writing rhythm guitar chords for a long time because it's so easy to play and chords just sound good on it.

I can't really write unless I'm full of inspiration. And even then I can't write unless I have some alone time.

You know, most of my career I wrote about moments in time. All of us have felt one thing or another and it didn't last very long. Now I'm drawing from real experience. It's a huge difference.

Any time a writer thinks he has all the answers to how someone should talk or react or end a scene, it's a spontaneity-killer.

As my kid gets a little bit older, if I feel like I have a little bit more time on my hands, I'd like to get more into developing ideas and writing things.

People put off writing thinking they don't have the time or enough of an opinion to matter and that is crap. You are the only one standing in your own way, so get started.

I remember when I used to have actual time to write and now you don't have time and you just do it. I think it explains a lot about television.

I've always loved writing. Doing that at the same time as playing music can be tiring.

I tended to write the book in these bursts of two or three months at a time. So I would know, or at least feel securely, that for the next few months I was at least going to have a few hours a day.

The challenge for any fiction writer is that your job involves simply sitting at a desk for a very, very long time.

I feel quite at home writing short stories but nervous and anxious when writing novels, as if the bad time of consecutive failures might arise again.