Quotes About Authorship

We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.

I fear dying in the middle of a book. It would be so annoying to write 80 000 words and not get to the end. I'm phobic about it. So when I'm writing a book I leave messages all over the house for people to know how the story ends, and then someone can finish it for me.

I was with him throughout the whole process: writing the books, finishing them and then the horrible disappointment when nobody was interested. You have no idea what it's like, Susan, being rejected, those letters that turn up in the post with six or seven lines dismissing the work of a whole year.

It's one of the paradoxes of being a writer that, physically, there's not a huge difference between the debut novelist and the international best-seller: they're each stuck in a room with a laptop, too many Jaffa Cakes and nobody to talk to. I once worked

A novel is a container for 80,000 to 90,000 words and you might see it as a jelly mould. You pour them all in and hope they'll set.

It's funny but I never quite know what to say when people tell me that they like my books. I almost feel embarrassed. 'That's great,' I muttered. 'Thank you.

Anthony Horowitz

Why do you have to be so bloody uncooperative all the time? Do you have any idea how difficult it is writing these books?

It was almost like discovering that Enid Blyton, in her spare time, had turned to pornography.

You write about me and I will make sure that all hell comes in your direction. I have my life. I have my experiences. And you have no right at all to appropriate my story, turn me into a cultural stereotype, simply to embellish your own view of the world.

one shindig to the next. I've often wondered how I would have managed if I'd been born with a stammer or chronic shyness. The modern writer has to be able to perform, often to a huge audience. It's almost like being a stand-up comedian except that the questions never change and you always end up telling the same jokes. Whether it's crime in Harrogate

Mary Westmacott, which was, in fact, Christie's nom de plume.

Akira Anno is Mark Belladonna, isn't she! Mark doesn't exist.' He rounded on Akira. 'You wrote those stupid books.

We've already agreed that I can't write about Ahmet or Pranav. So presumably I can't write about Maureen or Sky either . . . because they're both women! Or Lucky because he's a dog! At the end of the day, if I listened to you, I'd only write about myself! A book full of middle-aged white writers describing middle-aged white writers being murdered by middle-aged white writers!

He'd forgotten that one day Meadows would read it in my book. 'He was already

I can't write a line without music - it provides just the right amount of distraction to keep me focused. Clearly, I still miss the noisy roommates.

I heard somewhere that whenever you write a book, people will ask you One Question about it over and over. And while I'm no expert in these matters, this is proving to be true. My first book dealt with a not-that-pleasant degenerate type, and the One Question was, 'Is this an autobiographical story?'

I read one of the funniest books last week by Don DeLillo. He wrote this book, 'Amazons' many years ago, under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell. The book is very funny but I also think it's funny that he denies any involvement with it.

My pseudonym is 'George R. R. Martin.' That guy's just an actor.

Oh, I just tend to believe in things when I'm writing them. For instance, when I was writing 'Doctor Dee,' I believed in magic. And when I wrote 'Hawksmoor' I believed in psychic geography. But as soon as I type the last full stop, I'm back to being a complete blank again.

Til 1983, I wrote primarily for other psychologists and expected that they would be the principal audience for my book.

Gasman' was something I wrote on a beer mat in a pub.

I like to think that I'm one of the few people in public life who write their own material. I write every word. And I really enjoy writing - especially my political commentary.

That's the thing about a book: You're in the public life for a little bit, and then you sort of go away for a little while - several years, in my case - and then you come out again, hopefully.