Quotes About Authorship

I write at home. I like to be able to take a nap, watch TV, make a sandwich, and if I wake up and don't feel like working, I'm not going to bang my head on my desk all day: I'll go out and do something else.

Once I got into college, I discovered literature - in particular, multicultural literature. I just started to understand the power of story and narrative, and you know, like anyone else, I kind of wanted to do it, too.

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

I've probably written some books - I know I've written some books that were more interesting to me than to a large audience, but that was mostly when I was first getting started in academia and writing for a narrow audience.

I wanted to get better at writing, so I knew I needed to move to Nashville.

I have always loved writing as it comes very naturally to me.

Writing never came naturally and I still have to force my hand to do it.

The beginning of a book is always the hardest part for me. I'm a Chapter 3 kind of writer, which means I naturally start at Chapter 3.

Crime fiction has always been what I wanted to read, so when I sat down to write my first book, it was naturally the way that I was going to go.

I'd be lying if I said that any part of writing is easy for me, but I have always found that setting comes more naturally to me than, say, writing action scenes.

Christopher Fowler

I can claim copyright only in myself, and occasionally in those who are either dead or have written about the same events, or who have a decent expectation of anonymity, or who are such appalling public shits that they have forfeited their right to bitch.

The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn't precisely one of the things that engage you, often at first without your noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful.

as I contemplate dead hands and the loss of the transmission belts that connect me to writing and thinking.

There was also the time that competitors were asked to submit a paragraph of a Graham Greene parody: Greene himself entered under a pseudonym and placed third.

It seemed to me then that to have published a book - any kind of book - would be the greatest possible happiness I could ask from life.

You sure about this writer thing son?

If you like what you're reading, I probably wrote it.

You can make a lot of money from a book, but that is done by using a book as a marketing tool.

It is not easy to properly position and structure a book, not to mention to do the actual writing.

The reason [Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts] doesn't believe in the Bible is because he didn't write it himself.

All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.

For two years I have refused to answer idle questions on the order of Is your novel an open work or not? How should I know? That is your business, not mine. Or With which of your characters do you identify? For God's sake, with whom does an author identify? With the adverbs, obviously.

A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness.