Quotes About Writing

I think back on that day when 16-year-old me scribbled on some silly piece of paper for some long-forgotten high school career-day project that my dream job was 'romance novelist.'

I do like writing. When I was a little kid, I used to love writing funny, silly stories - and my mom would always encourage it. I don't know why I ever stopped!

I'm an extremely introverted and isolated writer, but I was starting to feel exhausted and as if my writing was becoming redundant. As much as it was a silly fear of mine, I began opening myself up to other writers and it was the best decision I could've made for my art.

People always want to give you advice about parenting. People who you've never met before will tell you you're doing something wrong. And it's quite similar in writing. People forget that you're a human; they just want to give you their advice.

Writing a book for me, I expect, is very similar to the experience of reading the book for my readers.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

The first sequel thing I wrote was this 'Forever Dawn' thing that will never get out, because it's horrid. But it's a really good outline for 'Breaking Dawn' - it's very similar. I knew what I was doing, which is good, because I think if I hadn't, there might have been a lot of pressure.

Working on 'Housewives' was very similar to 'Sex and the City.' Different cities, of course, but a high level of talent in the writing and acting on both!

Stuff that I write isn't as similar to the stuff that I'm in, but I don't really care. I just do comedy.

The real drawback when you write with a partner is that where you want it to go and where they want it to go is similar, but not exactly lined up, and that's where it's going to lead you into trouble.

Every writer dreams of having a backyard cottage, similar to Dahl's 'writing hut.' English cottages and charming huts might seem out of reach, but a good carpenter could build a modest cottage on the cheap.

I kind of do all of this writing as a way of thinking and learning. I'm sure it's similar to being a journalist: You get to learn, and that's the greatest kind of job.

I wrote the Dickens book because I loved Dickens, not because I felt a kinship with him, but after writing the book it seemed to me that there was at least one similarity between us and that was that Dickens loved to write and wrote with the ease and conviction of breathing. Me, too.

If I was Leo DiCaprio or someone similarly gifted and successful I wouldn't be writing. I'd be too busy acting in all the best scripts in town to try and write them!

The 'My Mother the Car' script read like Neil Simon compared to the 'Gilligan's Island' script.

My husband, David Simon, and I make our livings using our imaginations.

I never went to school for writing, never took a writing class, but when you're in a room with David Simon and Ed Burns and Dennis Lehane and Richard Price, and they're going over something you've written, you learn what works and what doesn't.

It's funny, I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.

I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words.

I write early in the morning at the computer, and people think I'm crazy, but I still use my Mac-Classic even though we have a state-of-the-art PC. There are just less distractions with the simpler machine.

As a writer, you're always trying to say the best thing. You're always thinking about what's the best thing to say, and what's the hardest way to say it, and what's the best line? Sometimes the best line is the simplest line. Sometimes the best line is the line that evokes more feeling than actual wordsmithing.

Of all the things that the digital revolution has produced, once of the coolest, simplest ones is you can now contact people who write books that you read. You used to have to write a letter to the publisher and hope they passed it along, which they never did.

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

I simply write with an intelligent reader in mind. I don't think about how old they are.