Writing Quotes
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These are old issues. Female power, misogyny, the treatment of women, how you make meaning in the world. And these are all issues that I've been thinking about and writing about for a very long time.
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I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away.
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When you're younger and a little more innocent, you write whatever [lyrics] comes naturally. But as you get used to writing you try to steer the sound and music to different music and throwing in the "kitchen sink" of sorts into the music. With that way, you end up putting in much more than before and you could even make much more next time around.
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To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.
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I am a diehard romantic, and I shamelessly accept that. I love writing letters.
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I went to grad school with the grand plan of getting my Ph.D. and writing weighty, Tudor-Stuart-set historical fiction - from which I emerged with a law degree and a series of light-hearted historical romances about flower-named spies during the Napoleonic wars.
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I think one of the keys to better writing is releasing all of your ideas and to not be afraid. Dream big. This could be the greatest novel in the world you know.
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When you're making an independent feature, there are so many difficult stages. One, just writing the script is difficult on its own. Then, when you get it to a place where you're happy with it, great - but then you need to find persons who are willing to produce it, who like the script.
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The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!
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Letter writing is an excellent way of slowing down this lunatic helterskelter universe long enough to gather one’s thoughts
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I can't do anything other than writing. I'm not very able, generally. If I'd not been a writer, I would probably be a very unsuccessful political adviser to someone or have worked for a council.
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While I do, of course, now feel the pressure having had books that have been very successful, I just know I have to concentrate on writing for myself. I can't worry about genres or markets or what might be commercial or not. That never works.
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The press keep asking me, 'What was your biggest mistake?' But if I had made a big mistake, they'd all be writing about it, wouldn't they?
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Nashville has become sort of this go-to writing city for every genre.
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When I wrote 'The Girl on the Train,' nobody knew who I was, and that's quite a comfortable position to be writing in.
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You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble - and I'm speaking of life, not writing - is 'no humor too black.'
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I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.
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I can draw pencil lines to show something is moving, but if I'm writing, I struggle with how to write it. The boy ran down the hallway? The boy ran quickly down the hallway? The boy ran down the marble hallway? I agonize over the words. So my editor works very hard. I'm lucky to have her.
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That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.
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My hope in writing this book has been that enough people will choose to profit from that opportunity to make a difference.
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In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.
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A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness.
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I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.
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Somebody said, 'Hey, there is a lull in your career. Why don't you write books about your [dyslexia]?' We are currently writing our 34th novel.
