Quotes About Writing

I do a lot of improvising when I'm writing, and I work very hard on the scripts... they are written very much in an actor-friendly way.

Some deeper part of me wants to write comical dialogue; I'd be foolish to not follow that impulse. Now I recognize that if there's energy to a section of work, you go where the energy is. It's a living thing, and you just follow it.

I believe that I improve with every book I write - most writers will probably tell you the same thing. I'm still learning my craft and will be until the day I drop dead at my computer. In my opinion, art isn't something that can be perfected. There's always room for improvement.

If you're having trouble finishing a book, it might be that you're trying to fix it as you go. Just finish the story, no matter how terrible you think that first draft is. Then let it cool off. In other words, don't look at it for a while. Then you can rewrite it.

In the beginning, my blog was exclusively read by my mom.

In the end, you have to write like you're not afraid of the critics.

In the end, I want to spend my 60s writing bonkbusters like Jilly Cooper.

I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end.

In the end, one has to feel lucky that things fell out O.K. I've felt that all the years I've been writing plays.

Writing for me can be homework. I do get a lot from it in the end. But I hate doing it.

I don't know what really makes a great musical or not. In the end, you write it, and you write it because you want to write it.

When I write something, I can't remember in the end if this is a memory or if it's not - I'm talking about fiction. So for me, it's the same thing.

A good writer takes time to go in-depth into a subject and then comes out with a good script. Then it's the job of the actor and director to improvise with it and make it even better.

You're trying to write about something that's sacred. You're trying to bring the seriousness of life and death to it, and you're trying to find a way to dramatize it, and you're trying to give language to it, which is inadequate. But it's important to try.

If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

Characters are so important to a story that they actually decide where the story is going. When I write, I know my characters. I know how things are going to end, and I know some important incidents along the way.

It's my right to write on what I feel about certain incidents, and it's your choice whether to read it or not.

That was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you'll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.

I was never interested in acting on film or in television, but I was always more inclined to writing and directing, and the exploration of character.

My favourite authors include Trollope and Dickens.

I'm thinking of sending out censorship packets: information to share with those who want to defend my books when they come under fire. I'll tell why I wrote them and include reviews and letters of support from children and their parents.

Once the writers got to know the actors, they would include certain things - personality-wise - for the characters because they knew you liked that sort of thing.

I feel lucky that my career so far has included books for adults and books for kids. They're equally important to me, and I hope I get to continue writing both.