Quotes About Authorship

The process of writing and creating and answering that very unique call inside yourself has nothing to do with agents and sales and all that stuff.

I sat down to try to write 'Edinburgh,' an autobiographical novel, and that took five years to write and two years to sell.

I love the satire and skewering of comedy writing.

For me, when I start a novel, I only have a general sense of what I am going to do - usually three or four big scenes or something to which I can really respond emotionally.

I am not a person of schedule when it comes to writing.

I started out writing much more science fictiony stuff and writing about science fiction.

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think.

If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.

I wrote the screenplay for 'This Is Where I Leave You' - all 40 drafts of it.

I consider myself a good screenwriter.

I always write the script by myself.

I've never envied the person who had to put my books together in one script.

When I sit down to write, I know everything I need to know... I start writing, and within 30 seconds or 60 seconds, I'm watching a movie. I'm not making this stuff up; the characters are acting it out,and I'm just writing it down.

I can only write new words at my desk, the one I've owned for 25 years. When we moved to our new house I designed my office around it. I've written everything I've ever written at this desk.

The mind of the writer does indeed do something before it dies, and so does its owner, but I would be hard put to call it living.

Who has ownership over stories these days?

Creativity's about ownership.

I don't believe in the ownership of work.

Creative people feel huge ownership of our content; we want everything to be done ourselves. But in book writing, there's a process: editors, PR people.

I'm giving away my family's story. Who owns the family's story? I don't. But you could turn it around and ask, 'Who is to deny me to write my family's story?' I have hurt people, but I don't think in a dangerous way. But you can't tell.

When I'm writing, which is 8-9 months out of the year, I'm in a concerted writing pace, where I work 5 days a week for at least a few hours a day, maybe a little bit more. But I won't work for more than 2 hours at a time. I'll work for a couple hours and take a break.

I move between the two: I write an adult novel, and then I write a children's book. I quite enjoy that. It's a nice change of pace each time.

Edgar Rice Burroughs taught me pace and gave me a sense of action and adventure.

I attempt to write a good novel. Whether it is literature or not is something that will be decided by the ages, not by me and not by a pack of critics around the globe.