Quotes About Authorship

I think of myself as someone who thinks largely through writing. Thus I write more than most people, and I write in many different forms. I think of myself as the kind of person who writes, rather than as one kind of writer or another.

I really love being a weirdo who writes a lot of different things for a lot of different ages. I have been considering doing a guide on my website so that a reader who liked one of my books could find the other books that he or she might like, because I know some of the books are really different from the rest.

Writing is not a competitive sport. Everyone that writes has his or her own voice.

Nobody writes like Nabokov; nobody ever will. What I would give to write one sentence like Vladimir!

As so many writers know, the experience of creating an imaginary world is closer to dreaming than it is to normal, grit-your-teeth work. It's preconscious rather than conscious. Ideas fall into your head, and the book writes you, rather than the other way around.

I keep a diary because I love this writer, David Sedaris, and he writes a lot about his diary, and he inspired me to keep one.

Anytime an African-American writes an unconventional novel, the writer gets compared to Ellison. But that's O.K. I am working in the African-American literary tradition. That's my aim and what I see as my mission.

A lot of times, people assume that I write all the songs: that I arrange them and I stick Kevin up there as kind of a puppet or something. It's absolutely not that way. In fact, he writes probably 60 percent of the songs, and I write probably 40 percent.

It's very important to me I get my autobiography out before I die and someone else writes it and screws up my life.

What I find weird is that the term 'chick lit' is used to encompass literally anything a woman writes about relationships. It's the assumption that because you're female, you must write in a certain way. I don't understand why that is - it is a bit demeaning.

Nobody ever has a problem if a man writes a woman. I wanted to be able to say, 'Well, I can write your men and your action, too. You don't just have to give me the love scenes, which I don't even think are my strong suit.'

I don't know how everyone writes a novel; that sounds exhausting.

Every man writes his manner. I just made poor decisions.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Suspense arises naturally from good writing - it's not a spice to be added separately.

I like the process of pencil and paper as opposed to a machine. I think the writing is better when it's done in handwriting.

You don't want to become guilty of plagiarism by letting someone else's words get inadvertently mixed in with your own. If you do feel the need to paste in a block of research while you're writing, be sure to highlight the copied text in a different color so you can go back and remove or rewrite it entirely later.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

Certainly the plagiarism, and dealing with the fallout of it, was the most difficult thing I've ever faced since I started writing.

I am a writer... I am a genius of a writer; I have it in me. I am writing the best poems of my life; they will make my name.

Writing is a very focused form of meditation. Just as good as sitting in a lotus position.

No one under international copyright law has the right to depict me or my husband without our consent. I have been surprised by the many people, particularly Americans, who are either writing books or going to produce films about the Mandela family without even bothering to consult us.

I can't recommend technical writing as a day job for fiction writers because it's going to be hard to write all day and then come home and write fiction.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.