Quotes About Writing

I think young writers ought to be heretical.

What I tell young writers is to find those things that you're so passionate about that your energy doesn't run away.

I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.

There's a disease that young writers are susceptible to, which is, I will do this because I can - hubris, I suppose - without stopping to work out why.

Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start.

When young writers approach me for advice, I remind them, as gently as I can, that they are on their own, with no help available anywhere. Which is how it should be.

Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself.

Young writers take themselves very seriously in college.

I always talk to young writers about when you make art in your room, you make art. And when you send it to New York and L.A., you have to be a professional. Of course, when you sell your book rights as an option for a movie, you have to be a professional about that.

As a middle-aged woman who has had some luck as a writer, I'd like this profession of author to remain a possibility for young writers in the future - and not become an arena solely for the hobbyist or the well-heeled.

I have always discouraged young writers from self-publishing, by which I mean going to a vanity publisher and spending your hard earned savings - say, some two-three lakhs - and getting your book printed. It's not published; it's printed!

For me, writing for younger audiences and writing for adults uses two different halves of my brain.

What I described in 'Another Life' - about being on the hill and feeling the sort of dissolution that happened - is a frequent experience in a younger writer.

I'm a writer first and a singer second. And then I started editing my own videos when I was 17, so it's a process I've been doing since I was younger.

Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.

'The Glass Menagerie' by Tennessee Williams is a great play. I had to read it for school when I was younger, but I started writing scripts after that. That's what got me into writing.

What's interesting to me is how many vampire/urban fantasy authors are writing young adult series as well, often set in the same world as their adult books, but focused on a younger audience.

When I was younger, I avoided exercise or anything strenuous. I didn't even enjoy walking. As I got older, I spent so much time marking books or sitting at a desk writing that there was no room for exercise - not that I would have bothered anyway.

I always value my large kitchen because it was better to do everything there, you wash up, you do everything, rather than messing up another room and I pop my typewriter just next to it. So I still write now but I was doing more writing when the children were younger.

If I could go back in time and tell my younger self that eventually that I'd become very successful writing Dune books after Frank Herbert's death, I would have laughed myself silly, I think, at how strange that prospect would be.

When I was younger, my mother and I, we'd have these crazy, crazy fights. Everyone would storm out mad, and the only way that I'd be able to express myself was to write her. We would write letters back and forth for days. When I'm writing, I feel uninterrupted. I write what I'm going through and how I see it.

I cry, sometimes, because I'm not 20 years younger, and I'm not healthy. But if I were, I would even sacrifice my writing to enter politics.

I was assigned to the Waffen-SS but was never involved in any crime. Besides, I always felt the need to write about my experiences in a larger context one day. This has only developed recently, now that I have overcome my inner aversion to writing an autobiography in the first place, specifically one having to do with my younger years.

I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter.