Quotes About Writing

A thousand things to be written had I time: had I power. A very little writing uses up my capacity for writing.

I have more free time than a lot of individuals, so, instead of talking, I sometimes write.

At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that's good.

In my case, the long gaps between my books have got quite a lot to do with lack of confidence. A lot of the time when I'm not writing I start thinking I can't do it.

Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again.

If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.

I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.

Every time an adult is going to write something for a teenager and you don't have, physically, a person who is that, you are always going to be a little off.

I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and internet since that time.

I thought a dignified thing to do would be to live in the country by the time I'm 50 and write books

I've managed to include only enough historical detail to give the "flavor" of the time period while keeping the characters and story focal.

The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet

An ear will never do you wrong, but I know writers who... most of the language they use is just extracted language from other languages they've read. I am a big-time reader, but I mix and match.

I've been trying to write. I also spent a lot of time on different campuses, in conversation, helping other writers. That's what I do: I teach them writing.

By the time writing was invented, the Greeks and Egyptians had already learned to extract opium from poppies to facilitate sleep.

Probably not needing to be published would give me more time to think about a book.

Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.

All good writing is built one good line at a time. You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon while the fingers bleed.

I didn't know at the time I was writing Because of Winn-Dixie where the story came from, but in retrospect I can see that it was a response to a terribly harsh winter here in Minnesota.

It's really funny - when I'm depressed or I'm having a hard time, I'll write really fun stuff. And then when I'm really happy, I write really depressing stuff.

There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it's going to.

I started writing stories in my spare time.

I felt like you can write forever, but you have a short time to raise a family. And I think a family is a lot more important than writing.

My aunt could never understand how writing could be a full-time job. She'd keep asking when I'd get a real job!.