Quotes About Writing

My office-hour reading is fairly ad hoc: I generally read whatever seems relevant to what I'm editing, writing, or thinking about writing.

I've been fortunate enough to write a book and travel the country to sign and sell it, so I can safely say that a five-second burst of conversation while you're scribbling your name, over and over, is not the most reliable way to bond with Americans.

A lot of newspaper columns used to be written in a rat-a-tat-tat, fast-paced style - and they tended to be funny. They were a little relief from the grimmer, grayer parts of the newspaper, and one of the best people at doing this was Will Rogers.

The characters in my stories all have quite loud lives in my head. It's a relief to get them on the page. Often they come from people I've noticed or overheard - but that is only a part of them. It's only by writing that I discover who these people really are.

When I started writing 'My Struggle,' my father was still an issue: someone I had in me every day, someone I would dream about - he was still a part of me. He was such a huge figure for me, and now he is just one among many, and that feels like a relief.

Usually, I use writing as a way to figure out things about me, and I get scared pretty easily about everything. I deal with a lot of depression, so I usually use it as way to find some relief from that.

All art began as sacred art, you know? I mean, all painting began as religious painting. All writing began as religious writing.

Quite simply, my writing life has been one of relish, challenge, excitement.

I'm a reluctant writer of non-fiction, in part because I don't really feel qualified.

Even though I was a reluctant reader in junior high and high school, I found myself writing poems in the back of class.

One of the reasons I'm reluctant to start a novel is it's such an obsessive activity. You get in there, you don't know anything else while you're in there. And that's quite a sacrifice to make, especially for us old guys where time is kind of short. You don't want to disappear for a year; you want to be outdoors.

There's never been anyone like Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, and there never will be. She is such an important source of inspiration for me, reluctant recipe writer and follower that I am.

I do my best to build a strong factual foundation for each of my novels and rely upon my author's notes to keep my conscience clear.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

It's a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you can have a private life, which I really cherish. I don't like to be in the public light all that much. I don't crave the whole fame thing at all.

You need two things to remain very, very present. You need to continue to write well and engage yourself in the issues of the day. And you have to continue to make good, relevant records.

All the people I have written about remain with me - perhaps they are my closest friends.

I'm not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy.

I first came to think about media and politics in the late 1960s, having observed some distortions up close, but since then I wouldn't say that my personal experience has remained an important motive for my writing about media.

My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.

I don't think I would have written a combat novel if I had just had peacetime military training. I think, in fact, I probably would have remained a poet and just written a short story every now and then.

I am a writer who has a policy to allocate 90 percent of my time for research and the remaining 10 percent to write.

To this day, 'The Duke and I' remains particularly close to my heart; I felt it was the novel in which my writing took a huge leap forward.

At the beginning when you're writing and building the beats of the story, everything that you put in there seems very essential to the story. However, when you have the movie finally edited and it's 4 four hours long, you realise that some of the events and some of the beats can be easily lifted but the essence of the story remains intact.