Quotes on Writing

The difficulty in the way of writing a children's play is that Barrie was born too soon. Many people must have felt the same about Shakespeare. We who came later have no chance. What fun to have been Adam, and to have had the whole world of plots and jokes and stories at one's disposal.

All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your task is to make things up convincingly and interestingly and new.

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.

There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.

That's something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

I'm not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'one word at a time.'

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday

The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page.

To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.

There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.

When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.

Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?

Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

You can't write well what you don't read for pleasure. If it doesn't entertain you, it's not going to entertain anyone else.

I'm not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don't enjoy the writing, I stop.