Quotes About Authorship

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more." ( "The Castle" )

I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have.

Because I'm the author of my screenplays I know what I'm looking for. It's true that I can be stubborn in demanding that I get what I want, but it's also a question of working with patience and love.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

Ask a book publisher how many copies a book has sold, and he or she, presuming you're not the author, will probably try to remember the size of the first printing, then double it. If you're the author, the publisher will try to remember the number of copies that were shipped and cut that in half in order to avoid encouraging you to expect a big royalty check.

My first sale was of a record review of Pink Floyd's The Final Cut that was in 1983. My first national sale was with science fiction writer Frederik Pohl for the magazine Starlog in 1993. My first book was published in 2003, Giants of the Genre (Wildside Press)

For me,the greater part of writing is daydreaming, dreaming the dream of my story until it hatches out-the writing down of it I always find hard.But I love finishing it,then holding the book in my hand and sharing my dream with my readers.

Plus, I love comic writing. Nothing satisfies me more than finding a funny way to phrase something.

I write about cats. Cats, when you read this, write about me. Be the change you want to see.

Y todas las teorías de la libertad, desde Gide a Sartre, no son sino inmoralidades concebidas por solteros irresponsables.

Why do You Send Fools To judge My Work?

People who make snide comments to authors like "anyone can write a book" or "well, you did it, so obviously I can/it can't be that hard" or poke at a book because it's "romance" or "genre fiction" and act like that somehow makes it substandard because they don't read it... well, ok, go ahead. Write a bestseller. Don't forget to go through the correct edit process. We'll wait.

For some reason, when people meet me and find out I'm a writer they always ask if I write children's books. Um... please don't let your kids read my books. Well, unless your kids are in their 30s or something...then yeah, they're old enough. LOL

Usually I write about what I care about, which is a weakness but I think also a strength.

There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.

it's very clear to me that my ability to think and write at the same time depends on the flow of ink. The thing I enjoy most is the flow of my own ideas and getting them down on paper. I will not write with a ballpoint pen, because it doesn't really flow. That's why I use a fountain pen. And only a fountain pen that really works very well.

Suuri kirjailija on ennen kaikkea kertoja ja kuvaaja. Muista nämä. Suuri kirjailija ei ole koskaan saarnaaja, hosuja tai maailmanparantaja.

Every good author has a trick, a great and mighty trick.

Do not say to yourself, "I've got a book in me!" (huge cliché anyway) and assume that means you are also competent to write a book.

As you can see, when I write, I like to look like I'm recovering from tuberculosis.

It's been proven that writers are funnier when they are demoralized.

As a writer, you make yourself less real with each book you write. [...] The despair you feel is that of one who lives in two dimensions and is trapped inside a square, in the middle of an infinite piece of paper.

People think, 'Hey, I love kids, I want to write children's books.' But they think children are happy. That's their first mistake.

A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.