About Writing Quotes

The characters I write about are very internal.

A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.

No Way Back is my kind of novel - a tough, taut thriller - Mofina knows the world he writes about.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

I've been able to write at least one book a year for 20 years, and I don't think I would've had that kind of drive if I hadn't come out of the journalism business.

The writing ethic was influenced - when you have to write every day, there's no such thing as writer's block.

When I am so intensely involved with writing my books I don't like to reread them.

When I sit down in front of a Windows machine, I can't write; when I sit down in front of my Mac, I can write. So I only use Macs.

Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write.

I was trying to write a straightforward book of sociological analysis, or at least cultural criticism, and I failed.

I write autobiographically, although I apply liberal amounts of poetic license.

Unfortunately, most news writing is the product of a first draft culture.

I can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange.

Jed Diamond is, quite simply, one of the wisest men writing today on the topic of male emotional and physical health.

I like to write for actors I know and with whom I've worked before. You can write to their strengths and weaknesses and write roles that are better suited to them.

It’s harder to write a story with just two people in a room than with 50 characters.

When writing for a mass audience, put a fact in every sentence.

The only thing I've ever regretted is not writing more; not being more honest; not saying how it really is in Baghdad. It's hard to get there sometimes.

I just write what I want to read, and sometimes keeping it interesting means adding one more element that ends up adding another year to the work.

I love poetry, read it a lot, but make no claim to being able to write it.

While I believe there is certainly a phenomenon of timelessness in art, the people writing today can comment on today in an exclusive manner.

My own goals center around writing the best music that I can, and only I can determine whether or not I've succeeded in accomplishing that.

I write because the act of writing itself is what drives me. It's a private communication within myself - nothing more or less. This doesn't mean I do not want to share with people.

I think comedy is the hardest actual form of writing there is.

Basically, unless you're willing to write down debts and save the economy, you're going to have deflation and a steady drain in purchasing power - that is, shrinking markets.

Amateurs write when they are inspired. Professionals are inspired when they write. This is a subtle but important distinction.

I think writing for anybody helps you order your life. It helps you arrange your emotions and your thoughts and it helps to provide perspective.

Kids love to be silly, they love to laugh, so I think it was natural for my kids to like the sort of books that I write - and it's the only kinds of books I'm capable of writing.

The characters that I have on Twitter have very little resemblance to me, the person who's writing them.

It's such a deliberate thing to sit down and write a tweet. You're putting yourself out there in a very deliberate way, and over however many tweets, you start to create a character for yourself.

I don't keep up with it all. But Taylor Swift writes songs about everybody she goes out with, right? What a way to build a career.

Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don't want to read.

Curiosity is the best motive for writing: curiosity about the world at large, or about oneself.

I started writing as soon as I started reading.

What I love is the writing, it's not having written. I like the process of it.

You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door.

I think anyone who writes suspense fiction and says that King isn't an influence is either lying or being foolish.

In Nashville, there is a historic tendency to work the lyric to death while settling for music that works. In pop or rock, it can be the other way around.

I procrastinate to a point where I'm filled with self-loathing and then I start writing. It's usually a state of self-loathing that gets me going.

You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.

I didn't think one day something would happen that would bring me back to Wall Street to write what is essentially a sequel.

If I'm feeling something, I know if it's a song, or if it's a little story that I'm going to write, or if it's a painting or play. I might sit down and write a play.

I'm all over the place. As you may have seen from the credits, I write with everybody.

I'm sort of killing two birds with one stone here, getting to write for "True Blood" and being able to put myself in a comic at the same time.

I have been aspiring to write some sort of literature for a long time.

Any story you write about war, or film you make about war, is bound to be political whether you like it or not.

When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.

Remember to write for yourself, not for a market and give yourself time to develop your own style, your own voice. It takes a lifetime. Enjoy it!

By the end of the week, if I'm still alive, I get to write whatever I want about it all.

I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door.