Quotes About Authorship

My essential identity is that of a writer.

Dostoevsky was my literary idol for a long time.

I wanted to see if I could write a good book.

I'm a huge David Lindsay-Abaire fan. If I could write, I would want to write like him.

If I could chat with anyone, it would be Claire Messud, because I think she could tell me how to get better as a writer as I age.

At the end, we can embrace and love whatever we want of an author's work. But we also can't ignore a writer's express wish just because we don't happen to agree with it.

For most of my career I illustrated books for other people.

Once I have the story in my head, I write it down. The illustrations usually come last.

My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.

I wrote 'And Two Boys Booed' several years ago, but we really chased around looking for the perfect illustrator, so it took a while.

I don't put a lot of description in the books because I write books the way I like to read them, and that is I like to build images and be a creative reader, and so I write that way.

To be a writer, you need to like spending a lot of time by yourself in the company of imaginary people.

The good thing about writing a novel is that you're creating an imaginary world and can take a break when you need to.

Part of a writer's job is just spacing out, looking into the air and imagining things.

I started a novel right before 'The Imitation Game,' so it's funny now, four years later, to be coming almost back to finishing it.

I actually started an adult book, worked on it for about two years, and then decided it just wasn't coming together for me, and thought I'll go back to children's books, and almost immediately I started 'Holes,' and it just seemed to take off on me.

It's what all writers dream of, that our work finds a measure of immortality that long outlives the words of any critic.

I don't think you can ever assess your work. I don't think Turgenev could assess his any more than I can assess mine, and his didn't have a social impact as much as great literary impact.

The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.

Having a facility for language is an important part of being an author.

I always have the impression that I write the same book.

Books are really fun because your 'voice' is pretty undiluted. There is a very direct connection between yourself and your audience. You will have an editor, but their job is to help you clarify or improve your voice, not change it.

When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared.

I didn't understand in the beginning that the editor didn't want me to know the author. I'd make an effort to meet the author, but it would end up being a disaster because then I had the author telling me what I should be doing.