Writing Quotes

We can learn so much looking outside our core field of expertise.

The parts of me that hurt the worst want me to write something for them, but I can't. I don't know what to say. I'm lost in all this sadness, and so are they.

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job.

Science fiction is not about the freedom of imagination. It's about a free imagination pinched and howling in a vise that other people call real life.

I really believe that there is an enormous appetite amongst readers for an originality of vision. In other words, be true to your own dreams and there will always be people who want to hear them.

Exercise the muscles that compassionately open the heart.In your writing and your life.

For me, writing stories set, well, wherever they're best set, is a form of cultural curiosity that is uniquely Scottish - we're famous for travelling in search of adventure.

I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it.

Traveling can never be taken for granted, no matter how meticulous the preparations.

All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind.

Writing the middle of a novel is a lot like driving through Texas. You think it's never going to end, and the scenery looks the same.

The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.

My father once admonished me to master the laws that govern fine writing until I could weave my words into worlds. If ever I accomplish that feat, I will sign my name to the tale.

Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.

To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.

Writers are a product of where we come from but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.

Yes, I was good at reading people. I studied them so I could put them in my novels.

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.

The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man

Love it when a compelling new character kicks open your mental door, tracks mud across your brain, and props their feet up on your cerebrum.

I don't think I've ever dared to write down what I see in the ruins of me, or tell in any detail the scars and all their secrets.

History is full of blank spaces, but good stories, invariably, are not.

The only thing worth thinking about, when I write a story, is whether I like it, whether I want to write it, whether it excites me.

Writing about the 1950s has given me tremendous respect for my mother's generation.

I've found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It's possible to make a connection with any kind of writing - as long as the writing is good.

For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists.

If you end your story, it's a static work of art, a finite circle. But if you don't, it belongs to anyone's imagination. It stays alive forever.

I write flawed characters. Ones that do not always make the best decisions and are driven by ambition or lust. They are not black or white, they are in the large space that exists between.

Researching books gets you into nothing but trouble.

Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind.

A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way.

On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.

There's something about each of my books that I'm really proud of, and there's something about each of my books that I cringe over.

A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.

Blankly expressing oneself can be stronger than words.

Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.

We make our lives bigger or smaller, more expansive or more limited, according to the interpretation of life that is our story.

I appreciate a book intended to be judged by its cover. The insincere readers are often weeded out while the sincere readers remain curious.

A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.

Write something worth reading and your voice will be heard.

Editors are licensed to be curious.

Don't worry about what you're writing or whether it's good or even whether it makes sense.

I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

A lot of artists start out as failed poets, then move on to being failed short-story writers before they finally break through to the big time and become failed novelists.

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

about clichés. Avoid them like the plague.

You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.

Respect and love your readers. Write for the reader.

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.