Quotes About Authorship

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Writing nonfiction, you're responsible to posterity, to history, to other people because the events happened, and you feel responsible to record them as they happened.

When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.

Writing is a solitary experience. I'm extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It's so intimate, I can't even share it with my wife.

I identify as an agent when I'm agenting, and I identify as an author when I'm writing. I expect both those things to be true for as long as I'm able to do them.

I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

We may have our own ideas in the writing and editing stages, but we work out those disagreements in a constructive way.

Kids think you just sit down and start writing. I always tell them you never do that.

There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

For a director and a producer to be named on the writing credits is practically unheard of.

It's really important to me to follow the kinds of conversations that happen around diversity and representation and writing inclusive books.

I remember being out here at the Sunset Marquis, and whoever knocked on the door, I would take that picture that I was writing and I would put that in the typewriter, so when I had the meeting, they would say: 'Oh, you're working on it right now?'

I don't mind writing so I didn't find that difficult, it's just a question of finding the time to do it. I kind of like the direct connection with the fans actually, it's pretty neat.

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing.

I enjoy writing personal essays in the way of Charles Lamb because it goes back to the school days when I was good in writing essays.

My name became a brand, and I'd love to say that was the plan from the start. But the only plan was to keep writing books. And I've stuck to that ever since.

Writing is self employment, so you can make your own schedule.

I worry that people think you have to go to a university to be a good writer, which is categorically untrue. I don't think I learned how to write at Oxford. I did not go to any creative writing classes or anything.

While I was writing 'Elizabeth Is Missing' and struggling with the intricacies of the plot, I told myself the next book would be really simple and linear, and I'd have it all worked out before I set down a single word.

Writing is my favorite part of the job.

You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it's really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.

The writing process, it's too mysterious to try and describe.

I think I write and publish as often as I do because I can't bear being without a book to work on... I don't feel I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell, but I know I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.