Quotes About Writing

I don't like the word rock opera, but I'm trying to write on that level that's reserved for plays still, or novels.

I don't have many friends. It's not because I'm a misanthrope. It's because I'm reserved. I'm self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I'm writing my books.

You read a script and its based on 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction', and it goes right in the bin.

I think that you just understand, as any creative person, that there's a beast that you have to beat, and it never goes away. I've resigned myself to that, and it's kind of what keeps you going. Writing is the worst and the best.

When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!

That actually is one of my huge challenges right now because I write best at night, no question. I can focus. You know you're not getting any phone calls, I can shut everything down, and I'm just more creative at night.

I do this a lot with names. I'll start with a name, and then for some reason he won't talk much, or he's older than I pictured him just because of a name I give him. So then I finally get the right name, and I can't shut the guy up. This always happens. There's always a character who gives me trouble that way.

I decided to write a crime novel. That genre was at the height of its popularity in Poland, so I thought it might earn me a bit of cash to go on with my work on 'The Books of Jacob.' I shut myself away for a few months and devoted myself entirely to 'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.'

It's much easier to teach writing, because people are less shy about writing. If they're in a group, nobody can see what they're writing. When you're drawing, people get a little more nervous.

I started writing stories when I was six years old. I was a very shy kid, extremely shy, and I had a fabulous first-grade teacher who told me to write.

I'm usually too shy to write on planes because I assume that everyone on board is as nosy as I am and will look over my shoulder and read what I'm writing.

I'm not a natural story-teller. Put a keyboard in front of me and I'm fine, but stand me up in front of an audience and I'm actually quite shy and reserved.

When sex is necessary for the plot of a book, or a character development, then I don't shy away from it. Why should I?

I shy away from showing cruelty on the page. A lot of the violence in my books actually happens off stage. The police come on to the scene after the event has occurred.

I spent many years writing and directing in radio drama, so I am comfortable with an audience or a microphone, but I do worry about the blurring of an author's public persona with the work itself. A good 'performer' can make a mediocre book sound strong, and a shy author can leave listeners missing the excellence of his or her writing.

I was always someone who wanted to write. I was a real shy, bookworm-ish kid, and I think my earliest stuff was fairly dark.

I am shy and self-conscious and awkward, so I think that's why I became a writer.

It's funny, because I had no intention of being in a band because I was so shy. But I loved playing music and loved writing songs. I always thought I'd be in the background and, if I did get into a band, be a backup musician.

You can find dozens of books about people taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad. I knew I had to do something different to cross Siberia. To drive and to talk with people along the way, that was how I wrote my book 'Great Plains'. I drove and camped in Siberia, but did not have a real program.

What contributed to my writing early on is how my mom encouraged it. She kept the TV off because she wanted my siblings and I to be engaged and active. So we made forts, put on plays, musicals, and I wrote like crazy.

I've always wanted to have a book published - it was a dream of mine, but the thought of actually writing a book made me feel really sick.

Discovering the 'impossible' ending to a new book makes me sick with joy and relief.

I usually grow sick of my short-story characters and think, 'I never want to see you again.'

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.