Quotes on Writing

There are millions of people who think that romance isn't real writing. But the only person who can make you real, make your books real, is you.

The writing of 'Topdog' was a great gift. I feel the play came to me because I realized that my circumstances, while causing me despair and heartbreak, also held great possibility, if only I could see it.

I was a very good nurse, but I burned out after eight years or so because it wasn't what I truly wanted to do. Writing is what I belong to.

There's something about the idea of writing, and thinking about writing as a form of prayer - the way as a writer you call out into the world and throw your words into the world. You're not praying to a god, but you're almost conjuring a reader to arrive. That's what books do: they're an invitation to readers.

Definitely, there is a sense in my writing that people now know me in a personal way. And to an extent, that's true because I write about very personal things, and I use the personal often to contextualize some of these sociopolitical issues that we're dealing with. And to an extent, they're right. They know something about me.

In the sense that writing is to retrieve the past and stop the passing of time, all writing is about loss. It's not nostalgia in the sense of yearning to bring back the past, but recognition of the erosion of things as you live.

Good directing is good writing and good casting.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

There are infinite shades of grey. Writing often appears so black and white.

Writing is a strange and solitary activity. There are dispiriting times when you start working on the first few pages of a novel. Every day, you have the feeling you are on the wrong track. This creates a strong urge to go back and follow a different path. It is important not to give in to this urge but to keep going.

I used to think that if I had a choice between writing well and living well, I would choose the former. But now I think that's sheer lunacy. Writing weighs so much less, in the great cosmic equation, than living.

Novel writing is the slowest art form in the world. It is not a sprint. It is not even a marathon. It is a series of marathons that stretch over and over across a continent.

I'm always terrified when I'm writing.

Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.

Writing is a spiritual practice in that people that have no spiritual path can undertake it and, as they write, they begin to wake up to a larger connection. After a while, people tend to find that there is some muse that they are connecting to.

I think that's what good writing is all about. You go into a genre to talk about other things. Tolkein created a whole world to talk about the world he lived in.

Writing is so humbling; there's no confidence involved.

The beginning and the end are never really the journey of discovery for me. It is the middle that remains a puzzle until well into the writing. That's how life is most of the time, isn't it? You know where you are and where you hope to wind up. It's the getting there that's challenging.

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.

I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil. I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow.

He wanted paper and something to write with, some way to sustain a thought, to place it in the world.