A Quote by Paul Theroux

I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction.

Paul Theroux

Quote Topics

Alone Any Distraction Fiction Interruption One Way Only Only One Way Room Think Way Without Write

Quote Author

Paul Theroux
American - Novelist
Born: April 10, 1941

When you write, you're alone in a room. And when someone reads a book, they're alone in a room, too, usually. It's a really intimate exchange. And so people ask me where I get the boldness to talk about this or that, but I didn't feel like it required any sort of courage, because I was alone. Sometimes it feels weird for people to read it.

Donald Miller

Some day some one will write a book about that frantic search of the creative worker for silence and freedom, not only from interruption but from the fear of interruption.

Mary Roberts Rinehart

I write fiction longhand. That's not so much about rejecting technology as being unable to write fiction on a computer for some reason. I don't think I would write it on a typewriter either. I write in a very blind gut instinctive way. It just doesn't feel right. There's a physical connection. And then in nonfiction that's not the case at all. I can't even imagine writing nonfiction by hand.

Jennifer Egan

I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn't room for what I wanted to write.

Sara Zarr

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

Elie Wiesel

To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It's sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it in you or not. Everyday. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour to writing. In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time.

Harper Lee

I did not always know I would be a writer. Until I had a room of my own, I did not write much at all - no more than any other child who read a lot of books. I began to write fiction and poetry when I first had a room that was truly my own with a door that shut and some measure, however fragile, of privacy.

Marge Piercy

I only like non-fiction. After 30 pages of fiction, I think: what nonsense are they trying to write.

Suhasini Maniratnam

I write non-fiction quicker, and I write it on a computer. Fiction I write longhand, and that helps make it clear that it comes from a slightly different part of the brain, I think.

John Lanchester

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.

Arthur Schopenhauer

It is distraction, not meditation, that becomes habitual; interruption, not continuity; spasmodic, not constant toil.

Tillie Olsen

It is the witness alone that can work without any desire, without any idea of going to heaven, without any idea of blame, without any idea of praise. The witness alone enjoys, and none else.

Swami Vivekananda

It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction, whatever you call the fiction that I write. I just go about it blindly, feeling my way towards what it has to be.

Deborah Eisenberg

Among well bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt for others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.

David Hume

I write my first draft by hand, at least for fiction. For non-fiction, I write happily on a computer, but for fiction I write by hand, because I'm trying to achieve a kind of thoughtless state, or an unconscious instinctive state. I'm not reading what I write when I wrote. It's an unconscious outpouring that's a mess, and it's many, many steps away from anything anyone would want to read. Creating that way seems to generate the most interesting material for me to work with, though.

Jennifer Egan

I only write maybe one or two songs every couple of years that I think are good enough to play alone without other stuff happening.