Quotes About Inspiration

I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.

My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.

I really want to write a novel. I also want to learn to play the mandolin.

When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.

'Life of Pi' was actually a very simple novel to write.

Writing in a near frenzy is wonderful and freeing, but for me, it did not result in a nice, shiny novel. Instead, what I have is a mess.

I wrote my first novel and my second novel in Chicago. It was the place where I became a writer. It's my favorite city.

Writing in a near-frenzy is wonderful and freeing but, for me, it does not result in a nice shiny novel. Instead what I have is a mess.

It's hard for me to think of writing a novel, because it takes so long.

The great advantage of a novel is you can put in whatever comes into your head - it has the same shape as the human brain.

I never know as a writer when I set out into a novel where it's going to take me.

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.

I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist.

I thought I wanted to be a journalist or a novelist.

I hadn't ever felt any particular calling to be a novelist, and I clearly remember telling a friend of mine about six months before I started work on 'Elsewhere' that I would never write a novel.

I was one of those kids who never wanted to be anything but a novelist. And I don't know a lot of people who truly live the life that they dreamed of.

You know, my mom, who inspired me to be a novelist, I remember her reading 'The Agony and the Ecstasy,' about Michelangelo, and saying, 'No mother would want that for her child, no matter how great the artist.' I have my share of demons, but I am a gregarious sort.

I've always liked the idea that writing is a form of travel. And I started my writing career as a mystery novelist for adults.

In high school, I wanted to be an actress. Until I got to college and took some creative writing courses. Then I decided I wanted to become a novelist.

Like so many others, I came to romance during the golden age of it - Judith McNaught, Julie Garwood, Johanna Lindsey and Jude Deveraux were at the height of their historical domination. Without those women, I wouldn't be a romance novelist.

As a novelist, you have to be free. Books can't be an act of filial duty.

As a young, ambitious novelist, writing for kids never crossed my mind.

No one looks at a baby and says, 'You are going to be a great novelist, and you really need to start writing now.' Something in us says: 'This is what I must do.'

A novel I read when I was about 17 or 18 - 'The World According to Garp,' by John Irving - really made me want to become a writer. The character of Garp is a novelist, and at the time, the whole lifestyle of being a writer was hugely appealing to me.