Quotes About Authorship

I think if a book has the power to move a reader, it also has the power to offend a reader. And you want your books to have power, so you just have to take what comes with that.

Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.

When you're writing a book, you don't want it to be overly trendy because you want people to enjoy it for years and refer back to it.

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

Why do I love writing? I can be who I want, do what I want, hurt who I want, and make the world over, just the way I'd love to have it.

When someone thinks, "I liked his last book, I'll hope this new one is good" and shells out their hard-earned, I fervently want that person to be thrilled.

Listen carefully to the feedback your readers give you. Dont write unless people want you to write, a lot of people write just because they want to write.

I was always so relieved that anyone wants to publish anything I've written.

I'm not one of those people who as a writer lets my characters tell me what they want to do or call to me or seek me. I go seeking for things, using them as an agent, really.

How well your readers connect with and care about this character determines the success of a story. In other words, if they've emotionally gone on the journey with the character, suffered with and experienced the joys and triumphs of the character, as well as learned the lessons and truths, only then have you, the author, done your job.

Writing is not a profession, occupation or job; it is not a way of life. It is a comprehensive response to life.   Gregory McDonald        

Even the oddest, most particular book was written with that kind of crazy courage—the writer's belief that someone would find his or her book important to read.

We are all whispering into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book, just like building a library, is a sheer act of defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.

Even the oddest, most particular book was written with that kind of crazy courage - the writer's belief that someone would find his or her book important to read.

Writing a book, just like building a library, is an act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.

by Tim O'Brien Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi & Phil Falco e-ISBN: 978-0-545-22993-7 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of

Writing is hard work, not magic. It begins with deciding why you are writing and whom you are writing for. What is your intent? What do you want the reader to get out of it? What do you want to get out of it. It's also about making a serious time commitment and getting the project done.

This "domination by the author" has been, at least until now, the point of writing and reading. The author masters the resources of language to create a vision that will engage and in some way overpower the reader; the reader goes to the work to be subjected to the creative will of another.

Come molti autori ci raccontano, si scrive quando si ha qualcosa di interessante da raccontare. In questo momento, io ho solamente un vuoto mentale, e consegno a te la pagina bianca", replicò Roberta.

I'm not a good crime writer. I'm not good with plots... so I have to do something else.

It seemed to me that I could write commercial fiction. I wasn't sure whether I could, or whether I wanted to write serious fiction at that point. So I said, 'Let me try something else,' and I wrote a mystery - but I didn't know much about it.

I don't think I could have just kept writing the 'Richard Jury' books. It wasn't that I was bored or dissatisfied. I just had to write something else.

I write best when I sort of collide myself with another man. So I think, I hope, that a combination of me and Stieg Larsson will create something good.

I've written a lot of books now; I've been published for over 30 years. I hope with every book I learn something new, and with every new novel I try to improve the process of writing.