Quotes About Writing

If you know the voice you're writing for it's such a shortcut. It's such a catalyst to creating the kind of energy you want.

Despite the fact that I had a writing background, they didn't want to accept whatever ideas I had as a writer.

It's now expected of me that I will defy expectation, so I really generally seem to be free to write what I want.

Never open a book with weather. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

The crime part is the engine that moves the narrative and allows me to write the other things I want to write about.

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.

But, George and Steven asked me to write the Indiana Jones sequels, and I didn't want to.

It's immoral that people make money out of writing crap, but I try not to obsess about it. I don't want to spend my life being angry.

That's very nice if they want to publish you, but don't pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.

A writer can get into a vast deal of trouble through misquotation. If you ever want to receive lots of mail, I recommend you get a Shakespeare quote wrong in a magazine or newspaper.

Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don't know what the laws of nature are.

I stop and think before I start a new book and ask myself do I really want to spend the next year or two or three with these characters because if I don't, then I shouldn't be writing about them.

I have finally become my own genre, and now that's what publishers want. I have a wonderful publisher now, Mulholland, very innovated, very fine people working there.

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say

The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm a writer who's writing books, and therefore, I don't want to die. You'd miss the end of the book, wouldn't you? You can't die with an unfinished book.

Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.

My father could have been deported because on his immigration application he said that he was a printer, obviously because he didn't want them to be checking his writings.

Nobody wants to read a 600 page book in which the author is fabulous throughout.

What I really value about being a writer is that I can go to rehearsal when I want to, and then, when I need to be at home writing or with my kids, I go home.

I do not know what you are supposed to do with memories likes these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on.

With fiction, it could be about anything. It just has to be good writing, like Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which I read recently. I want to forget I have a book in my hand.

Actually I'm writing as best I can, in order to keep the momentum and the career there, but I want to live.

Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.