Quotes About Authorship

I wrote 'Hereafter' quickly and without mapping it out too much or being too schematic. As an exercise, I think that was incredibly important.

I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots.

Writing a novel is hard work but it feels great to have the printed copy in my hand. Tonight I celebrate with the Laneway Press team who have helped me so very much. Prepare for the popping of corks!

When I type a title page, I hold it and I look at it and I think, I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I'll have a book.

I usually get the title for a book first, and I type it up immediately. I sit there and look at it and admire it, and I think to myself, I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I'l have a book. It is such a pleasurable moment that I type many more title pages than I could ever use.

I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.

If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.

The writer's life: Hard days, lots of work, no money, too much silence. Nobody's fault. You chose it.

Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.

Going to so many book events keeps me connected with my readership while constantly reminding me that all the long hours at the drawing desk are worthwhile.

I have a background writing screenplays and teleplays. I've tried to write prose and fiction but never really completed anything I thought worthy of publication or worthy of anyone else to even look at.

If your life were a book and you were the author, how would you want your story to go? That's the question that changed my life forever.

Once you've published a few books, you drag around this ball and chain of a back list. All the evidence of how few you've sold is there. I think a lot of writers my age have this strange experience of going from would-be to has-been.

It was not until I began to write a book called 'Light Years' that an editor really stepped in. The editor was Joe Fox at Random House, and he wound up editing a subsequent book.

It's always hard to wrap up a series. The longer I spend with the characters, the more they become like friends.

What I'm trying to say is that a lot that lies behind being able to live the writing life is psychological and wrapped up in ideas of self-definition.

When you think about 'The Grapes of Wrath,' it's an American masterpiece, and a very long process goes into the making of such a book.

When I'm writing a novel, which is what I like to write, I get up early, sit zazen, make a pot of green tea. I wear wrist cuffs to keep my wrists warm and minimize irritation from extended contact with the surface of my desk. I sit down and write.

It is difficult not to write satire.

Nobody has to give me permission to write.

The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought, if really want to write, it's time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day, and I figured, I can do this. I never got past Page 3 of that book.

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.

Life doesn't just happen. You happen to life. You decide how you want to write your story.