Quotes About Authorship

For 'The Bestseller'... there was hardly any research, but I had to give each person a quirk and develop their stories so that it would relate to who they are.

I wanted to write stories I wanted to read, that I and my friends related to.

One thing I have noticed is that when you're a younger editor, you're more intense about it. As you go along, you relax a little. More and more, I feel that the book is the author's. You give the author your thoughts, and it's up to him or her to decide what to do.

I've come to see that these politicians that release books - no way are they actually writing those books. Not when they are working fulltime, too. There's no way. That's their name on the book, but it's not their work. I'm sure of that. There's no way.

Normally, it takes me about three years to write one of the big books. It is usually four years between releases because of the huge amount of travel and PR and just nuisance going on around them. I have a lot of pressure from publishers and agents.

If I hadn't told stories, I would've been a historian.

Those who read the fiction assume that, because I'm also a historian, I know what I'm talking about.

Long historical books get written by women, but not contemporary experiments, which still seems to be a very male-dominated field.

I think 'Hollow City' only took a year and a half to write... but it felt like two and a half!

There is no way a non-Jew could say what I did in 'The Holocaust Industry' without being labelled a Holocaust denier. I am labelled a Holocaust denier, too.

Holy cow - everything about writing a novel is hard for me.

I don't know what's going to happen in life, so I don't think it's fair that I know what's going to happen in 'Homeland.'

Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.

As a writer, I'm convinced that encouraging children to write fiction, to hook into that marvelous machine called the imagination, has to be good for everyone.

Fiction was a massive, massive part of my formative years, far more so than television ever was, and I always hoped that my future would lie with writing.

I don't try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.

I'm hoping to get started on a new novel.

You write, hoping to write a good book; that's it.

I spent years only ever reading horror and then trying to write horror - and deep down, a horror writer is still what I'd love to be. But it wasn't until I started writing crime that things began to work for me.

The difference between an author and a horse is that the horse doesn't understand the horse dealer's language.

My first five novels were written longhand. So were hosts of short stories.

I'm lucky in the sense that I can write wherever I am - on the bus, in the hotel room, backstage, sitting at home.

The most common misperception about me is that I write fast. I just write often. Every hour that I can.

I think it's much more natural as a writer to want to tell one story rather than lots of small stories that are half an hour long.