A Quote by Alex Garland

I wrote a whole novel before The Beach. Unpublishable. Junk. But, for some reason I stuck at novels and wrote a second. Still not sure why I didn't give up. Stubborn, maybe.

Alex Garland

Quote Topics

Beach Before Give Junk Maybe Not Sure Novel Novels Reason Second Some Still Stubborn Stuck Sure Up Whole Why Wrote

Quote Author

Alex Garland
British - Novelist
Born: 1970

When I wrote 'Savage Season,' it was three years later before I wrote the second Hap and Leonard novel. Whenever I wrote one, I never intended to write the next one.

Joe R. Lansdale

I finished my first novel - it was around 300 pages long - when I was 16. Wrote one more before I got out of high school, then wrote the first Lincoln Perry novel when I was 19. It didn't sell, but I liked the character and I knew the world so I tried what was, in my mind, a sequel. Wrote that when I was 20, and that one made it.

Michael Koryta

I wrote about four novels before I wrote a word of journalism.

Francine Prose

I wrote 'Yellow Submarine' for the Beatles. I wrote the screenplay for 'The Games,' about the Olympic Games. I wrote 'Love Story,' both the novel and the screenplay. I wrote 'RPM' for Stanley Kramer. Plus, I wrote two scholarly books and a 400-page translation from the Latin, and I dated June Wilkinson!

Erich Segal

I always wanted to be some kind of writer - I wrote plays and songs and "books" before I realized living and breathing people still wrote poems.

Denise Duhamel

It's more like I write multiple first drafts, handwritten. So with my first novel, I wrote whole drafts from different points of view. There are different versions of that novel in a drawer on loose-leaf sheets. I won't even look at the first draft while I'm writing the second, and I won't look at the second before writing the third.

Lauren Groff

I wrote a few unsuccessful screenplays before I wrote 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.' I wrote them as television plays that never got made. I'm glad I wrote them - I think it was a good experience.

Kelly Masterson

One day, at my office, I wrote down some names and dates and notes, and I wrote a title, 'The Age of Despair,' and then some other 'Ages' - Innocence, God, Reason, Hope - and I wrote this as well: 'Woman, born in 1930, lives till the age of 80 or so, suffers depression, marries a car dealer, has children who grow up to confuse her.'

David Bergen

Writers are frequently asked why they wrote their first book. A more interesting answer might come from asking them why they wrote their second one.

Len Deighton

A lot of people have trouble with their second novel - the dreaded sophomore jinx. I wrote three books in between the two novels, and they just weren't very good.

Claire Cameron

In the immediate aftermath of the separation I just wrote and wrote and wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote. Thank God I had that as an outlet.

Pegi Young

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn't intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

Alice Munro

I am not only the person who wrote and sold a novel while raising a houseful of biological and foster children; I am also the person who wrote a horrific young adult novel that never sold and gave up on a foster child I couldn't handle - an experience that still haunts me.