Quotes About Authorship

When I started publishing, I got offers to write for big magazines. But I would always say, "Well, it's not that I don't want to write for these big magazines, but you can't edit it."

Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.

...One reason I became a writer was that I figured out that if you call yourself a writer, you can read all you want and people think that you are working.

I am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to. I don't want to limit myself.

As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.

I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.

I dont really write with the idea of trying to teach any lessons. I want to tell a story as truthfully and engagingly as I can, and then let the chips fall where they may.

I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.

Start writing the things that you are reading or that you want to be published doing.

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will not get any criticism. I might as well write the book that I want to write.

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. And I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.

Guy Kay is probably my favorite and the writer I most want to emulate.

Because I write a book a year, I always want to do one other project every year that's stimulating in a different way. It means you can be working but not using up your prose juice, you know?

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

I always let the characters guide the stories. They really let me know what they want to say and what action they want to happen.

I know that I'm a real writer because sometimes I write a story just because I want to; not because someone's told me to.

That was you?" "Well, it wasn't Sailor Moon.

Without a story there is no meaning. And the nature of the meaning depends on the nature of the story. To understand this is to understand the true power of stories. And so, to control the stories, to be the one doing the telling... Well now, wouldn't that be quite a thing...?

We believe that innovative authors are more likely to come from people who are independent and won't work in a software 'factory' or 'bureaucracy.

Someone once asked Somerset Maughham 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.

To write about long-dead people is one thing. To write about one's own lifetime is different. And of course I must take care to avoid writing anything that gives offense to the emperor. Yes, I'm finding it difficult. But never fear, I shall finish it, and Philip will be impressed.

I'm writing a book. I'm almost finished. I numbered the pages. Now all I have to do is fill them in.

Sometimes, it seemed almost as if this book wrote itself.

I focus on the writing and let the rest of the process take care of itself. I've learned to trust my own instincts and I've also learned to take risks.