Quotes About Writing

Sometimes I eavesdrop on people. I could rationalize it - oh, this is good anthropological research for characters I'm writing - but it's basically just nosiness. It also helps me gauge where I'm at: Am I normal?

Like most writers, I write about what has happened to me as that involves the minimum amount of research.

If I could do what Hilary Mantel does, I would probably do that. She is more intelligent and a better researcher and knows more what she's about than I do.

Is any job safe? I was hoping to say 'journalist,' but researchers are already developing algorithms that can gather facts and write a news story. Which means that a few years from now, a robot could be writing this column. And who will read it? Well, there might be a lot of us hanging around with lots of free time on our hands.

I do enjoy having researchers and writers around me because I am getting a lot of different influences now from the opposite sex, different races, people of different ages, who are helping write the routines. So I am seeing things from other people's perspectives, which I never really had to do before.

Eventually, while researching, you'll learn something you didn't want to know. Some fact that ruins a plotline you had in mind. The good news is that sometimes, learning all the facts can make for a much more interesting story than you originally had in mind.

Researching and writing about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98 was one of the most exciting and involving projects I've undertaken.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.

I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book.

All my books take a long time to research. I spend several months researching before I start writing, and in the middle of writing I often have to stop and look up stuff. At my local library, I am one of the best customers! The research takes several months.

In researching 'The Luminaries,' I did read quite a lot of 20th-century crime. My favourites out of that were James M. Cain, Dassiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene and Patricia Highsmith.

I don't think, as a journalist, I'd ever get a story written. I'd probably spend five years researching it, and by the time I'd finish it, no one would be interested in it anymore.

I like making things. I enjoy putting words and images on a blank space. There should be joy in the writing itself because parts of it are so challenging and lonesome. I take great pleasure in reading, researching, and interviewing. I enjoy forming my sentences and revising them to make them clean.

I really enjoy researching, and for almost every piece, I research enough to write a book.

In the early '90s, I was hired to write educational dramas about HIV and AIDS in the shantytowns. I did that for two and a half years, and then I was hired on other films. When 'Tsotsi' presented itself, I thought, 'This is not a world I grew up in, but I've spent a great deal of time writing about it and researching it in my past.'

One of the best parts of being a writer means that researching all kinds of cool stuff actually counts as work!

I'm a journalist, not an advocate, so I approached researching and writing the book the same way that I do any other reporting. But when you're writing for yourself, you have a little more room to say what you think.

The luxury of time to write, and the confidence to do so, make it easier for the more affluent and when the most decorated novels all begin to resemble each other the tacitly accepted view of what a good novel must be (and must be about) shifts imperceptibly.

Well I don't feel sectarian against sparseness, although I sometimes get a little chippy about this. I resent the way that a certain notion of parsimony has become the norm for skilful literary writing.

The biggest takeaway from a memoir is that you have to play fair. Within the first draft, I was writing very angrily because I had a lot of resentment and a lot to process. Through revision is where a lot of learning happened and a lot of forgiveness happened.

What qualified me to write about Israel was that I wanted to; it took no time to convince myself. The only reservation I had was about eaven: I wanted to write about the Jewish heaven but did not feel qualified because I did not and do not believe in 'it,' though I should.

At first my publisher had reservations about publishing it in the form you are familiar with.

I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.