Quotes About Authorship

I never thought I'd write one book, let alone three. I'm absolutely delighted and every night, thank the good lord for spell check.

I didn't become a good writer until I learned how to rewrite. And I don't just mean fixing spelling and adding a comma. I rewrite each of my books five or six times, and each time I change huge portions of the story.

Mr. Fitzgerald, I believe that is how he spells his name, seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.

At some point along the way, I stopped being a writer, and I became a black writer. I never used to be a black writer. I used to write 'Spider-Man,' 'Green Lantern,' whatever was lying around. 'Thor,' 'Hulk,' whatever. Now, if the phone rings or when the phone rings, it's almost exclusively some project that has something to do with my ethnicity.

If you're writing anything decent, it's in you, it's your spirit coming out. If it's not an expression of how a person genuinely feels, then it's not a good song done with any conviction.

I write about all the horrible things that can happen to kids as a way of keeping those things from happening to mine. Write the books, spit three times over your shoulder and you're safe.

You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter, you are a bit down the ladder.

I remember the first time I spoke to an editor. I thought I'd be sick, I was so nervous. The first time I spoke to a large group at a conference, I had the jitters for days beforehand.

I'm very happy that the New York Times has spoken well of my stuff; who wouldn't be? But it's not a choice I made.

Of course I had a piece of luck I couldn't have imagine for myself in a million years: I got an agent. That sped up the process. I'd say it's a good idea, getting an agent.

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.

The Bible is not such a book a man would write if he could, or could write if he would.

Every man is the author of his own life.

They had always told me that I wrote like a man.

It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.

No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

What's hard, in hacking as in fiction, is not writing, it's deciding what to write.

Consider this pronouncement, inscribed on an Assyrian tablet circa 2800 B.C.: Our earth is degenerate these days . . . bribery and corruption abound, children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and the end of the world is evidently approaching.

The writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.

Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery

Why do you want to become an author? I will accept only one answer. If it is because you feel you can write better than you can do anything else then go ahead and do it without frills and flourishes. Stick to your present job and write in your spare time: but do it as if it is a whole time job.

I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me.

I've always believed the words that came out of my mouth were most comfortable when I'd written them.