Quotes About Writing

I wrote 'The Assistants' while I was the Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief of 'Esquire.'

The best novel I wrote was one called 'Crusoe's Daughter,' which never won any prizes. But I was getting somewhere in that. I'm not sure I have in any of the others.

'Hill St.' was very good, but it was very impersonal work for me. I wrote about that place as if I was a visitor. It wasn't what my life was like. It was a great place to learn the craft of how to shape a scene, but I wanted a chance to write about more personal themes and obsessions.

When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.

I sold my first short story while I was home on maternity leave, then began working on novels. Since I was reading and enjoying romance novels at the time, the first two unpublished manuscripts I wrote were both romances. I sold my third novel, 'Call After Midnight,' to Harlequin Intrigue after submitting it unagented.

I was a writer for hire. I wrote to pay the bills.

I wrote 'Knots and Crosses,' the first of the Rebus books, not even realising that I was writing crime fiction.

The trick to my writing, it turned out, was doing so exclusively in bed. The minute I even dared to discipline myself and write at the desk, I produced mounds of nonsense. Yet, sitting in bed, I wrote easily, effortlessly, fluidly. I became the master of perfect indiscipline.

For me, 2016-17 was hell, and there's no way around it for me. I went through pain, depression, fear, doubt, and all of that was a journey that I was able to write through, and then I wrote when I was coming out of that dark place as well.

Despite his dodgy politics, Yeats remains an inspiration for his genius and the simple fact that the older he got, the better he wrote.

The great American food writer M. F. K. Fisher once wrote an essay called 'The Anatomy of a Recipe.' To have a good anatomy, in her view, a recipe should have a sense of logical progression. She despaired of recipes with 'anatomical faults,' where the reader is told to make a cake batter and only then to grease the loaf pans.

The publishers, as I remember at the very beginning of my career, wrote letters with their fountain pens. A letter is different from a phone call or fax. It's a different kind of intimacy. That pervaded the entire business of writing and publishing.

I wrote a book with my mom and my sister for fun. I had no idea it would be a 'New York Times' bestseller.

From my anger, frustration, and hurt, I wrote the short story that would later become 'The Hate U Give.'

I spill it out as fast as I can. I don't really edit. In Brazil, recently, I wrote 70 pages. In London, 80 pages.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn't think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

I'd never written a novel before, and I wrote a novel, and that turned out OK.

I had this vivid dream and woke up and I wrote the 'MyPillow' logo all over the house.

From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.

While I was in junior high, I wrote an entire essay in rhyme about manufacturing in New York State. In high school, I won a Scholastic poetry contest.

My favorite is 'The Last Coyote.' I'm not saying that's the best book I've written; I hope I haven't written my best book yet, but that one was the first book I wrote as a full-time author, with my full-time focus. I have a nostalgic feeling about it.

My approach to recording and all that is pretty organic. It just has to do with all the songs I wrote; go in and record them.

I wrote my first book at eight, all of four pages. At 10, I did a 40-page story. At 12, I wrote two stage plays.

I wrote a lot of scripts that were dark and fairy tale-like, but too strange.