Quotes About Authorship

I can't retire. My readers won't let me.

Language description and metaphors seem readily available. The things I have to work harder at are plot, pacing, and form.

If you read the first page of one of my novels, I can guarantee that you will read the last one. This isn't just social commentary. This is also about writing good page-turners. I want people to keep reading.

For a long time, I'd wanted to write a book that I would be proud and happy and psychologically and morally comfortable about my parents' reading.

I would be honored if someone reads my books and it inspires them to write their own work.

The most annoying and full-of-crap thing a writer says is, 'I write only for myself, I don't care if anyone reads it.' A writer without a reader doesn't exist.

I really care about my readers. I care about anyone who reads my books.

I don't think there is any such thing as a black writer or a white writer. Ultimately, there is someone whom one reads.

I had to live this long, have the experiences I've had, to create what I do. I knew I wanted to write for years, but I had to be ready so I wouldn't blow it. The move to Maine was the final step.

I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.

Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is 'real'.

I plot the first 5 or 6 chapters quite minutely, and also the end. So I know where I am going but not how I'm going to get there, which gives characters the chance to develop organically, as happens in real life as you get to know a person.

Being a writer - even a best-selling one - is usually not anywhere near as public as being a movie star, at least not when I'm out in 'real life' like this. Not that I don't use what fame I have, every chance I get, to help sell more books.

I never base characters on real people. There are people who do that but I really don't know how to do it.

Writing is a real activity conducted in real time.

I'm not good at dialogue. I'm not good at holding a mirror up at a real world. I'm not good at believable characterisation.

When I talk with my students, I introduce a process of work I call the three R's: First comes research, then real world exploration, and finally, and perhaps most important, a fact-checking review of all that has been written.

As an author, I realise, you're on your own. You have to do everything you can to help The Book. If I make sure people know it's out there, they can make up their own minds whether they want to read it.

When I finished 'True History of the Kelly Gang,' I realised that Faulkner had not lost his power over me.

When I wrote 'Dear Fatty,' I realised that sitting and writing alone is an absolute joy.

When I was about eight, I realised the person whose name was on the book got money for it, and it seemed almost too good to be true that you could get paid for making things up.

After I finished my first draft of 'Salvage the Bones,' I felt that I wasn't political enough. I had to be more honest about the realities of the community I was writing about.

Read. Read. Read. Read many genres. Read good writing. Read bad writing and figure out the difference. Learn the craft of writing.

If we enter into the kind of world that Google likes, the world that Google wants, it's a world where information is copied so much on the Internet that nobody knows where it came from anymore, so there can't be any rights of authorship.