Writing Quotes
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I've consciously tried not to romanticize anything, especially not intelligence work. I've always said that I've been writing a series of episodic, naturalistic novels. The people just happen to be spies, politicians, civil servants.
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For me, writing post-apocalyptic novels isn't so much about exploding helicopters and fifty-megaton doomsday bombs as it is about the pleasure of dealing with the best of everything that makes us human: cleverness, grit, loyalty, and self-sacrifice.
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Ever since I was 7 years old, I was writing. I remember being in the basement of my house, this dank, horrible basement, putting on plays with not-very-willing participants, and I would promise kids in the neighborhood that I'd play Nintendo 64 with them after we'd rehearse this stupid play that I wrote.
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As chairman of the tax-writing House Ways & Means Committee, I continue to be inspired by President Reagan's 1985 national address to the American people as he challenged them to join him in boldly reforming the broken, complex tax code.
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I'd always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.
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I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.
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I like to do the research of history and the creativity of writing fiction. I am creating this thing which I think is twice as difficult as writing either history or fiction.
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I don't know what'll ever happen if I'm in a healthy relationship. My writing career will go down the tubes.
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I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.
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What's the challenge in writing a novel that few people will read? I'm more than happy writing what I do and have no plans to change that.
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Writing every day across nine time zones because Gillian [Grassie] was in Berlin, and we were working together via Skype. It was pretty intense. I'm really happy with how it turned out.
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Writing is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote for 20 years and published nothing before my first book.
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I like visceral writing that people can't help but respond to, even if they respond, and they're shocked, or they're angry, or they're offended. I think that's the only way to reach people.
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When I started writing songs for Temple of the Dog, I went to my room with my acoustic guitar, and I was happy staying in that mode. It was more chordal based and more lyric driven. I enjoyed not making riff-based songs built around a guitar idea.
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When it comes to writing songs, I've always got to be commissioned to do it. I won't write unless someone has got a real genuine purpose for it.
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I don't really believe in a creative-writing major as an undergraduate. It's a bad idea, terrible. I've met creative-writing majors from other places and they don't know a goddamn thing. They're the worst students. They just think they're good because they could pass.
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Stop thinking about writing as art. Think of it as work. If you’re an artist, whatever you do is going to be art. If you’re not an artist, at least you can do a good day’s work.
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I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train.
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There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.
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The story itself should force its moral upon you. You find out what the moral is by writing the story.
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English of course is your major tool, but it is not nearly so important as other aspects of writing for example you have to have some natural ability you can't buy it no one puts it there you're born with it.
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What a thrill it is to have my writing recognized by an institution as admirable and vital as the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Yes. When I’m writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we’re capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.
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I write when the urge hits me, getting the words down as fast as I can type and then I step back from what I just wrote and start a dialectical process where I begin challenging my own writing.
