Quotes About Authorship

How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be 'and,' 'the,' and 'I,' and 'it,' and so on, and there's a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has been done for you.

I'm like a unicorn; I'm a midlist writer who hasn't done anything else but write. But because I wasn't amazingly famous, I didn't become Stephanie Meyer, or even a huge literary name like a Jonathan Franzen or a Joshua Ferris.

Not everyone realises that to write a really good piece of journalism is at least as demanding intellectually as the achievement of any scholar.

I have a degree in journalism, which is something that I make very clear very frequently just so people are aware of it. I went to school to write... Editorial integrity is very important to me.

I was never a good journalist, because I would make things up. A lot of people frowned on that, which is why I ended up in fiction.

I've always thought of myself as a journalist; that was what I did.

I'm not a journalist. I have not gone to school for this.

While I am not a journalist, I have, myself, written more than one thing that has been plagiarized in the past.

One of my favorite things I read was John Steinbeck's journals while he was writing 'East of Eden,' which was so cool.

I've always wanted to be a writer, and I've kept journals since I was eight years old.

For me as a writer, it's so joyful to know that someone hears and responds to what I write.

When I write, I'm talking to myself constantly to make sure that it sounds OK; it has kind of a nice rhythm and a nice jump to it.

The first draft is usually junk. You have to work on it seven to eight times.

I got put on jury duty, which is where I learned how to write.

I never thought I would just be doing Arkady books.

Writing is something I want to explore. If I were to do it, I would want it to be not a book made by a YouTuber; I would really want to respect that craft of literature and just be an author.

My hope is that I can continue writing and, in the future, I can just be Maya Soetoro-Ng.

I like to say that I always have a whole book in front of me. I write down the major beats, the major action moments or emotional moments. In theory, that's a book - it's just one page long. Then I start to go back and fill things in.

Something about writing needs a sort of distance not to be involved as a writer - just something that makes it easier to write. You have to make choices all the time - what to tell and what not to tell.

I didn't set out to write. It was just something I always could do. Teachers would say, 'you really have this gift,' but I just didn't care.

When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.

American Gods is about 200,000 words long, and I'm sure there are words that are simply in there 'cause I like them. I know I couldn't justify each and every one of them.

And that's what I've learned too: writing is key.

I don't keep any copy of my books around... they would embarass me. When I finish writing my books, I kick them in the belly, and have done with them.