A Quote by Neal Stephenson

At the beginning of the project, I wasn't certain that I could come up with an engaging storyline and cast of characters in this world, so I had a strong bias toward actually writing, and worrying about research later. In other words, I was afraid that I'd devote a year or two of my life to grinding through Kant and Husserl, then discover that there simply was no novel to be written here.

Neal Stephenson

Quote Topics

About Actually Afraid Beginning Bias Cast Certain Characters Come Come Up Could Devote Discover Engaging Grinding Had In Other Words Kant Later Life My Life Novel Other Project Research Simply Storyline Strong Then This World Through Toward Two Up Words World Worrying Writing Written Year

Quote Author

Neal Stephenson
American - Writer
Born: October 31, 1959

In the case of my second film The Fish Child (El Niño Pez), I had written the novel about 5 years before I made into a film. In the case of The German Doctor I had published the novel a year before I started writing the script, I even had another project to shoot. But I had this idea of the powerful cinematic language from the novel that I couldn't let go of.

Lucia Puenzo

When I'm writing, I won't know whodunnit until maybe two thirds of the way through. Until then, I know as little as my detective. I just make it up as I go along. It's nerve-wracking, actually. You'll be half through and not know your conclusion. You worry one of these days the ending won't come. I'll be left with only two-thirds of a novel.

Ian Rankin

There's actually a time when I got cast in something and it was announced that someone else was cast. I hadn't been told yet if I had the role and I had a breakdown because I really wanted it and it was announced on this website that this other girl had gotten it. I was so sad and called my agents and said, "You guys didn't tell me this other person got the role!" They were like, "No, they haven't decided yet." Then two hours later I got the call that said I had the role.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead

I still find the idea of a research-heavy or historical novel daunting. That's something I've had in mind for a while: like, would you research for a year and then start writing? I sit down, and I just don't know how to write it.

Lynn Coady

I had never thought about writing a novel. But I had two young kids, and I realized that if I could write a novel, I could work at home.

Mary Kay Andrews

For me writing is an organic process that starts with engaging the language and then thinking about the structure of the novel as you move along. Especially in revision you start to notice correlations. Things come up, not self-consciously, because you're busy feeling your way through sentences and trying to push the language into new places.

Dana Spiotta

If a novel is written in a certain language with certain characters from a particular community and the story is very good or illuminating, then that work is translated into the language of another community - then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

My own feeling is that the only possible reason for engaging in the hard labor of writing a novel, is that one is bothered by something one needs to understand, and can come to understand only through the characters in the imagined situation.

May Sarton

I started writing novels by not thinking about actually writing a whole novel - that felt altogether too daunting. I thought out a rough idea, then wrote chapter by chapter, and then by the time I'd hit 40,000 words, it was a challenge just to see if I could get to the end.

Jojo Moyes

I do apologize for writing by hand - and so badly. I shall soon be like Helen Thomas, notoriously illegible. In her last letter only two words stood out plain: 'Blood pressure.' Subsequent research demonstrated that what she had actually written was 'Beloved friends.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

When I was writing my first novel, 'Elizabeth is Missing,' I was writing the only novel I had ever written and writing about the only protagonist I'd ever written about. Because of this, I didn't think of her as a construct. Maud was real.

Emma Healey

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Mark Twain

I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting. I actually tend to suspect that in real life, there have always been very strong female characters, but at certain stages of society, they've been asked to cool it.

William Gibson

Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Two would actually do it- two magic words that could replace all the religions in the world- two wonderful words that embrace all the powers and all of the energy we need to survive with each other and with our planet and with all the world's living creatures- don't hurt.