Quotes About Writing

I always tell people, I never get writer's block because it's coming straight from my brain, like, real-life experiences. I'm like the news. I'm just reporting it for myself.

I always thought of myself as more of a columnist, but maybe a columnist who does reporting.

I really like the Observer. I think I'd love to have a column with a broad reach that would enable me to do some proper reporting, but keep it on sort of a humorous level. I've always had a very happy experience writing for them.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

I continue to enjoy looking for stories, and trying to do the best job I can reporting and writing them.

To me, the great joy of writing is discovering. Most writers are told to write about what they know, but I still love the adventure of going out and reporting on things I don't know about.

I've got a particular way of writing novels, and that carries over into the way I write comics and games, too. I'm a news journalist by background, so I approach everything as reporting - I treat it as real, I ask the questions I'd ask in a real situation, and I let the characters speak for themselves.

The shores of the Black Sea lend themselves to the literary genre that may be classified as 'cultural pilgrimage,' which is not just a higher form of travel writing but which has the further mission of reporting on present conditions and supplying neglected knowledge.

I was not very good at newspaper reporting. I'm just not quick enough, and I always tend to tell things as stories.

I didn't write anything at all except book reports until I was in seventh grade, and then I wrote mostly poetry for myself.

When I'm feeling frustrated with a story, I have faith that it's going to come. Also, when I first started writing, I wanted to write the stories that were not in my childhood, to represent people who hadn't historically been represented in literature.

I devoted myself to writing for years without representation or a promise of anything. And there were times when I felt quite down about my prospects.

I started writing in the '90s, so I was free to just have an eccentric career and not conform to some idea of what a black writer has to do. I didn't have the burden of representation.

TV writing - for me, at least - is half original voice and half an embodiment and a representation of the spirit of the actors you're writing for.

I started using this outlet of creativity - you know, going to the studio, writing, meeting these writers and producers - as the best form of representing myself to my fullest potential.

'Dreamsongs' allows me to show the scope of my writing - with personal commentary that puts the works in context and includes some autobiographical details intended to reveal how each piece came to be, what it represents, and how it has formed, or been informed by, my philosophy of writing.

I am trying to write a play that is big and I feel represents me - that's my big ambition.

Repressed English writers have to write love stories because they can't say what they really mean.

For my first three books the setting (or place if you will) has always been a given - N.J. and the Dominican Republic and some N.Y.C. - so from one perspective you could say that the place in my work always comes first.

It's hard to write an Evan Hunter novel because I really am starting from scratch. I'm assuming a new voice each time. The McBain voice is set.

As an author, you think you know where the good parts and the bad parts are. And then you read to a group of children, and you learn when you're boring them, and you hurry through those sections to get to the parts where they're interested again. You start to get a sense of your story's rhythm and flow.

I save her marked-up manuscripts as an unluckier husband might save love letters.

I used to approach writing like a football game. If I went out there and aggressively saw more, I'd know more, and I'd capture more, and I'd write better. Hut, hut, hut: First down and haiku!

I minored in creative writing in college, and I've played with the idea of doing something more hybrid, but comics are my first love.