Quotes About Writing

A novelist's lack of awareness of and critical distance to his own body of work is due to a phenomenon that I have noticed in myself and many others: as soon as it is written, every new book erases the last one, leaving me with the impression that I have forgotten it.

I don't do a lot of strategizing, career-wise. I was approached by Chris and Phil, the guys who did 'The Lego Movie.' They gave me my first job on 'Clone High.' We've been friends forever, and they asked me if I wanted to write something with them.

You can really help support a character if you understand the setting. So for that reason I generally write about Philadelphia.

I was born in Philadelphia and currently live in Minneapolis. I write for both children and adults.

I grew up in a household that really encouraged reading and writing. My mother loves philosophy and is constantly reading philosophy and talking to me about different philosophers and different ways of life.

In Algeria, I had begun to get into literature and philosophy. I dreamed of writing-and already models were instructing the dream, a certain language governed it.

I seem to be one of the few people in journalism who never worked or wrote for the 'Boston Phoenix.' I certainly read and admired it, and feel the same general malaise at news that it is gone.

I freelanced for the 'Boston Phoenix.'

I started writing it the day after Sept. 11. I was living in New York City. We didn't have any phone service and we didn't have any mail. Like a lot of writers do, I started to write in a voice that I missed.

I still find it absurdly difficult to concentrate on a novel if there's a phone or computer to hand; I have taken to locking them outside the room like noisy pets.

My least favorite thing about being in a band is photo shoots and video shoots. I like writing songs.

I always carry a Moleskine journal and a simple Parker Jotter click-pen. Journaling an experience is worth more than any photograph.

The thing that makes writing so difficult is you don't have the element of serendipity. At least with a photograph, you can set up the camera, and something might happen. You might be a lousy photographer, but you can get a good picture if you just take enough of them.

My mum was very interested in art and liked to write, and my dad was a hobbyist photographer.

The entirety of 'Bellocq's Ophelia' was a project, and I was interested in doing research and looking at photographs and writing about them, imagining this woman Ophelia and what her life was like and the kinds of things she thought about.

When I write, I imagine scenes. I write things down. I take photographs. I do some casting. I rewrite. It's a permanent making or remaking.

I was a very creative child. I played the saxophone and piano, and I was always writing poetry and stories, or drawing in my notebook. I just tried to express myself through as many creative outlets as possible. And in high school, I started to get really into photography and videography and would spend hours working on it.

I think photography is closest to writing, not painting. It's closest to writing because you are using this machine to convey an idea. The image shouldn't need a caption; it should already convey an idea.

I chose photography over writing. I had to make a living.

A film carries six fine arts - it consists of architecture, painting, music, writing or literature, photography and performance. It's a conjecture of all these things and yet based on literature.

Sometimes I'll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I'll just remember it.

I remember being interviewed about my first novel, 'The Colour of Memory.' They kept using the expression 'your first novel,' and I said, 'No, I object to that phrase, because this is it for me.'

I always like it when writers posit writing as an act of empathy. It's such a grand turn of phrase, such a noble ideal; empathy is so worth aiming for in life that the same must hold true in art. But personally, I can't think too deeply about that when I'm working, or I'd never get anything down on the page.

Some writers are curiously unmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them. For me, music is essential. I always have music on when I'm doing well. Writing and music are two different mediums, but musical phrases can give you sentences that you didn't think you ever had.