Quotes About Writing

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I'm a successful writer.

One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a 'binge' writer - like a binge drinker. I go on binges.

There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.

You know, as a writer, I'm more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

I think especially in academia, we are coached to go the route of paying to submit our writing to small publications, like the presses and the quarterly reviews and all of these that are considered 'prestigious.' As a writer in a college program, that's the route that you're taught to go.

Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired.

It's hard enough to be a lady writer. Doubly hard to be a funny lady writer.

The epiphany for me was that I wasn't a writer, and I had to do something with these texts. I put them in the streets as posters.

I think my becoming a writer had much to do with spending a chunk of each year sitting by myself out in a tent without radio, without newspapers, without a whole lot of people to interact with, without anybody having any sort of similar background to me.

My background is really being a writer's actor - that seems to be the way I work best, bringing out the best of writing. There's a whole range of acting skills, and some people can be astonishing with very poor material. That's not me; my skill is essentially unlocking the writing.

Chelsea Handler is a good friend of mine, and I always was inspired by the fact that she was taking her life and turning it into these ridiculous, raunchy memoirs. She really has a talent, and she's a great writer. I was inspired by her trajectory.

I got into writing to become a 'Star Trek' writer. I was a rabid fan. I had shelves and shelves and shelves of action figures in my bedroom that scared away more dates than I care to admit to.

I was already writing 'The Lost Symbol' when I started to realize 'The Da Vinci Code' would be big. The thing that happened to me and must happen to any writer who's had success is that I temporarily became very self-aware.

For me, the glory of my first 25 years as a writer was I could put things off as long as I wanted.

I find myself really feeling like it's possible that maybe the greater contribution I'm going to be able to make through this next phase of my life might be as a writer writing wonderful parts for women, or even writing wonderful parts for myself, you know?

The Osage have this lovely phrase: 'Travelers in the Mist.' It was the term for part of an Osage clan that would take the lead whenever the tribe was venturing into unfamiliar realms. And, in a way, we are all travelers in the mist. The challenge is that, as writers, we sometimes want to ignore this murkiness, or we want to write around it.

The average human attention span was 12 seconds in 2000 and 8 seconds in 2013. A drop of 33%. The scary part is that the attention span of a goldfish was 9 seconds, almost 13% more than us humans. That's why it's getting tougher by the day to get people to turn the page. Maybe we writers ought to try writing for goldfish!

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

I've been known to write 10 pages a day for 10 days running before I take a breath. I am not a disciplined writer. I'm one of those people who laughingly call themselves inspirational writers, which basically means someone who has no control over their own creative process.

When aspiring writers ask me about how they should target their writing, I tell them to pay no attention to that kind of thing. It will restrict you. You will end up falling into stereotypes in an effort to tailor your work toward a perceived genre category.