Quotes About Authorship

I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.

I was devastated when I got the review for my first book. The book came out a couple years before the women's movement broke through, and people were putting it down, asking, 'Why does the woman in this book need to get a divorce? Why can't she just shut up and be happy?'

I am shy and self-conscious and awkward, so I think that's why I became a writer.

I've always wanted to have a book published - it was a dream of mine, but the thought of actually writing a book made me feel really sick.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

I'm pretty ruthless about that; I think when you sign over your story, you sign over your story.

Everything that I write will be signed with my name.

If you don't believe I'm a professional, do not sign me. And if you've signed me on a certain belief, don't question my integrity.

When I wrote my stories in elementary school, I signed them all 'Karen E. Bender' with the squiggly 'E.' I wanted, from an early age, to be a writer, and that name - that E - was a way of pretending I knew how to do it.

There's nothing like meeting a girl at a signing and her telling me that she loves reading now, and she's even writing her own stories.

Decide where and when you want to write. I like space, and silence is an inspiration to me.

Each book I write is a shout into the silence and a prayer and a plea for change.

People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am, of course, not really a writer. Hemingway was a writer.'

Being an author is fun. It's a great job, because I can stay up as late as I want, and if I feel like taking the day off, I do it. Plus, I get to make up silly stories and draw pictures all day.

I just didn't know that you could have a voice and an authorship over a film, which probably sounds a bit silly. But I just hadn't really thought about films in that way.

Every time you hear someone read your book and liked your book, you're never sure whether that's going to follow with a similar remark from someone else. Perhaps I have low expectations, but whenever I hear someone say, 'I liked your book,' I don't know if it's going to happen again.

It's odd for me to compare my stuff to Lee Child's, because I'm such of fan of his, and also because it's curiously something I never did until I kept hearing about our protagonists' similarities.

I wrote the Dickens book because I loved Dickens, not because I felt a kinship with him, but after writing the book it seemed to me that there was at least one similarity between us and that was that Dickens loved to write and wrote with the ease and conviction of breathing. Me, too.

It's funny, I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.

I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words.

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. I write only when inspiration strikes, he replied. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.

In writing, "action" means putting words on paper. "Reflection" means evaluating what we have on paper.

What are you, crazy, Steve? Do you imagine anybody is gonna be interested in these lame-ass stories from your life? They are so ordinary! You are so ordinary. Readers are going to laugh you off the page. Whatever credibility you've built up over the years will go straight into the toilet. Stop right now before you totally humiliate yourself!

I write all day. I have no idea what I'm doing. I have never heard of narrative structure or theme or concept or act 1, act 2, act 3. I work entirely on instinct. I'm writing, as I said, about Burton Lines, about the trucking company. I'm writing about myself.