Quotes About Authorship

With all editing, no matter how sensitive - and I've been very lucky here - I react sulkily at first, but then I settle down and get on with it, and a year later I have my book in my hand.

I hope the wonder of what happens to my characters never goes away. That yearning keeps me writing.

To praise it would amount to praising myself. For the entire content of the work... coincides almost exactly with my own meditations which have occupied my mind for the past thirty or thirty-five years.

When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.

I've always viewed myself as a brand. When I started 10 years ago, that was very controversial. 'Marketing' and 'PR' were dirty words for the literary world, but that has changed. Once the book is finished, I want as many people as possible to read it.

You know, since the reviews have come out and people have reacted to it, I've realized that is in a sense what has happened. But as I was writing them, I didn't feel a part of any tradition. I think that would have been too overwhelming, in a sense.

When I set out to write crime fiction, I didn't think to myself, 'I'm going to model myself on Agatha Christie' or 'I am going to be a crime writer in the Christie tradition'.

I do not come out of a literary tradition.

So there's a lot of people tied into believing that the traditional response to the authorship question. In terms of actors, some people get very angry about it.

I doubt I'll ever have another traditional print deal.

If a traditional publisher offered me a quarter of a million dollars for a novel, I'd consider it. But anything less than that, I'm sure I can do better on my own.

Ages ago, when I published 'Amelia's Notebook,' I'd sent it to traditional publishers I'd been working with, but nobody knew what to do with it. Tricycle was this small publisher who didn't know any better, and they took a chance.

Maybe self-publishing is going to be an extra step added to publishing. Maybe what's going to happen is you self-publish a book, someone notices it - an agent? - and it goes from there into the traditional sphere.

My understanding is that a book becomes a best seller only when it is pirated, sold on footpaths and at traffic lights.

I don't see any division between the comic and the tragic. I feel like I'm writing about serious things, and humour is one of my tools. It's not contrived, just part of my world, part of the way things are to me.

I am not a trained writer.

I write by hand and then transfer the text onto the computer. I like the process of actually having a pen in my hand. Things flow more easily for me that way.

I was afraid that not even Merlin the Enchanter could transform me into a writer.

My biggest accomplishment has been making a transition from athlete to author.

I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that.

I'm not sure my books would translate into movies very easily. So rather than have someone do a terrible job, I haven't been willing to sell them.

Some of the writers I admire who seem very, very funny and very emotional to me can develop a closeness with the reader without giving too much of themselves away. Lorrie Moore comes to mind, as does David Sedaris. When they write, the reader thinks that they're being trusted as a friend.

I probably have not killed anyone in America because I write, I've maintained good controls over myself by writing.

The only advice anybody can give is if you want to be a writer, keep writing. And read all you can, read everything.