Writing Quotes
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There came this point where I sat down with all my notebooks and I had to start to write, when I thought: this whole notion of writing for the person who understands nothing, the average reader... He has to die! I can't have him in my head. And so the person I started writing for was the homicide detective.
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I keep writing books about why TV is good. There's nothing more fun to me than steering people toward something that I really loved that I think they might not otherwise see. That's the reason I do what I do.
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There is no living African writer who has not had to, or will not have to, contend with Achebe's work. We are either resisting him - stylistically, politically, or culturally - or we are writing toward him.
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That was my problem then and it's my problem now; I have a bad attitude. In a nutshell, I fear authority but at the same time I resent it - the authority and my own fear - so I rebel. And writing SF is a way to rebel. … SF is a rebellious art form and it needs writers and readers and bad attitudes - an attitude of 'Why?' or 'How come?' or 'Who says?'
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I did a lot of freelance desk publishing jobs when I graduated from college. I sort of earned a living doing that while I was writing plays, which was what I wanted to do. My hope was to become a playwright.
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I haven't stopped writing which is good. I'm scared to stop completely otherwise it might lead to stagnancy.
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Anything over-handed, I do left-handed. Like throwing a ball or serving in tennis. Otherwise, right-handed, like writing and shaving.
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My grandfather had been a newspaper reporter, as was my uncle. They were pretty good writers and so I thought maybe somewhere down the line I would do some writing.
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I sometimes have to write for a while before I figure it out, pretend that I know what I'm doing, sort of like ad-libbing on stage until you remember your line - you hope you sound convincing to the audience. The key is to have enough material, enough threads, so that there's something that can be satisfyingly drawn to a conclusion.
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I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I'm writing for the 'New Yorker,' I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people.
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I'm always writing songs, and I've got a bunch that I want to record.
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When I start writing a new imaginary future, I have no idea what it is. The characters arrive first. They help me figure out where they are living and I get to fill in the gaps with that and where we are. So when I get to the end of the process of composition, if I feel that I have really done my job, I have no idea what I've got - and I then spend essentially the rest of my life figuring out what it might mean.
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The books you read as a young person are books that stay with you forever. I think that is the biggest privilege of writing for young people. You feel like you can help shape somebody.
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I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travellers.
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Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.
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Writing your own jokes, you just kind of keep working on something until you think it might work, and then you try it out and hope for the best.
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I am not quite sure how writing changes things, but I know that it does. It is indirect-like the trails of earthworms aerating the earth. It is not always deliberate-like the tails of glowing dust dragged by comets.
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Privacy has become the most precious thing. Things have got more cryptic in my writing.
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I write - so it would seem - to recapture, to preserve and return to the past, though I might just as easily be writing to forget and put that past behind me.
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My name became a brand, and I'd love to say that was the plan from the start. But the only plan was to keep writing books. And I've stuck to that ever since.
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A student brings something to discuss, saying, "I don't know whether this is really good, or whether I should throw it in the wastebasket." The assumption is that one or the other choice is the right move. No. Almost everything we say or think or do - or write - comes in that spacious human area bounded by something this side of the sublime and something above the unforgivable.
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Before writing, I start with a series of questions, specific things I need to know before I can write the book... That list grows and changes as I do more and more research. But when I've answered the bulk of the questions, I begin to write.
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Well, I do write on political and social issues and the idea that one shouldn't - or the idea that we should censor ourselves - doesn't really work for me because it would be doing the government's job for them. And I'm not interested in doing that. I think what we need very much in Pakistan is to be able to discuss the corruption and the violence that really colours most of our life here.
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Communication is the most important skill in life. We spend most of our waking hours communicating. But consider this: You've spent years learning how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening?
