Top 1200 Writing A Book Quotes & Sayings - Page 7

When I am writing political op-eds, I do think carefully about the impact of my words. When I am writing fiction, it's a different story. In my fiction I am more reckless. I don't care about the real world until I am done with the book.

I never want to deal with a book once I'm finished writing.

I am not sure I knew what I was doing, writing an "apocalypse" novel, when I started this book. Now that the book is done, I can own that I have in fact written an apocalypse novel, one that speculates on a dark, dark future. Why I did it, I really don't know - every time people read my work they comment on its darkness, its sadness.

The process of book writing for me is entirely one of trial and error.

I am writing a book and that takes third place of importance.

The Hollywood stuff in the book tended to come later. I think it was because I was worried about leading with that stuff. I wanted to try to make sure that the other stories in the book were as interesting. I wanted to spend more time on them and craft them. The thing is, with writing, it's form or content.

I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

When I'm writing, I try not to think things like, 'Gosh, I have to finish writing this book.' Books are very long and it's easy to get discouraged. Instead I think to myself, 'Wow, I have this great story idea, and today I'm going to write two pages of it. That's all - just two pages.'

The good thing about writing book is that you can dream while you are awake.

I've always wanted to do a Crichton book. I really love his writing.

Distractions have never prevented a Writing Writer Who Writes from writing; distractions are an excuse proffered by Non-Writing Non-Writers Who are Not-Writing for why they are not writing.

I spent many years writing and directing in radio drama, so I am comfortable with an audience or a microphone, but I do worry about the blurring of an author's public persona with the work itself. A good 'performer' can make a mediocre book sound strong, and a shy author can leave listeners missing the excellence of his or her writing.

You've got to be a good reader. So whatever genre that you're interested in, read a lot of books about it and it's better than any kind of writing class you'll ever take. You will absorb techniques and then in a lot of cases you can just start writing using the style of the book or the author that you admire and then your own style will emerge out of that. Be a diligent reader and then try to write seriously, professionally and approach everything in writing in a professional way.

It's such a pain in the ass to write a book, I can't imagine writing one if I'm not interested in the subject.

Whenever I'm writing a book, small details from my life always creep in.

Writing a book is like loving someone. It can be very painful.

When I was writing Dune there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book's success or failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before experienced.

There is no money in the world that would compensate me for writing a lousy book.

So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the book.

I'm always writing. A friend of mine once said, 'You avoid re-writing by writing.' Which is kind of a good point, because re-writing seems to be mostly about craft, and writing is just, like, getting out your passion on a piece of paper.

A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.

Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.

Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters.

I had many reasons for writing this book but among them was the hope that every Latino child and adult would find something familiar in it. And my hope is that when they finish reading the book, that they will come away with a renewed sense of pride in our culture and in who we are. We get a lot of strength from that [culture and identity] and we should be proud of it.

If you read a book about school - someone else's book - you always translate it into your own school experiences. It's describing the student: he's bewildered and lost in a large crowd in a university classroom. You'll visualize that from your own experiences. So, everything you know is what you're really writing.

In the books I have written, I have created in my mind a universe. My kids say I have a village in my head and I live in that village, and it's true. When I start writing a book, characters from previous books reappear. All my emotions, my mind, my heart, my dreams, everything becomes connected with a new book, and nothing else really matters.

I'd never put much thought into writing an autobiography before, because while I have this public persona of being extremely confident, I also am extremely filled with self-doubt, worry and insecurity. This book came about because I was trying to sell another book, unsuccessfully, about health and wellness.

Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.

I would never want to hurt anyone by writing a book.

I teach for the Book Trust, which promotes reading and writing with children.

I think, what's the point of writing a book that you would get in one sitting?

Publishing a book is a very different thing than writing one.

I can't ever think of writing a book or an autobiography. I'm a little private person.

I never thought I would grow up writing a book.

For me, it's writing a book and telling people about this story.

I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf.

I immediately went out and bought a book on anger management. And now I have that book, and I don't know if I'll get to the book. But I'm certainly excited about the day where I can't find the book, and I get to say, 'Where the hell is my anger management book?!'

When a translator translates my book, it is no longer just my book. It is the translator's book, too. So the book in another language is almost the work of two people. And that is quite interesting to me.

I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.

Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author in the world. I love him so much. There's one book that informs me more than The Road - it's called Suttree. That book is a huge influence on me. I'm not smart enough to emulate him, but he inspires me. He never infiltrates my writing directly. He writes incredibly intelligently about people that are marginalized.

I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book.

I get intrigued by a puzzle, and writing a book is the best way to solve it.

I'm writing a new book right now that is like an erotica manifesto.

Writing advice is not the product of an equation. "If you do X, then Y will occur" is false in this instance. "If you name a character John Q. Hymenbreaker, your book will be an instant bestseller" is crazy-talk. Writing advice is not about providing certifiable answers. It is about making suggestions.

Writing a book is about me doing the work to get from the obsessive particular to something that reaches out of that in some meaningful way. It doesn't come easy to me. I really admire people who do it with acuity, but I don't, and for me it takes the process of working on a book for years to do any thinking that I feel accomplishes anything. I don't do it off the cuff well.

When I started writing, the deal was that publishers gave you a grand or two as an advance to buy some sweets, with the promise that they would make a big putsch with your fourth book when you'd built up a bit of a following. But by the time my fourth book came out, previously unpublished authors were the new big thing.

When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.

Every writer dreams of writing a book that will touch people.

What I am best at is reading a book and then writing a critical essay.

Being able to say something lyrically, to say something that will do more than just be words, is really hard. It's easy to do when you're writing a chapter of a book or writing poetry, but it's really hard to do when you're confined to a melody line.

For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.

Many people think that it is important to have a title before you begin writing the book, but I think you should never sit around waiting for the right title to strike before you start writing. Crack on with the story, put in the hard work, and the title will come eventually.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

For me, writing is more a process of discovering the book than planning it.

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing - none of that is writing. Writing is writing. Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

I like that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing--that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around. They're the best moments in a day of writing -- when an image appears that you didn't know would be there when you started work in the morning.

Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

Even if you plan your book, the actual writing is unplanned.

There's a lot more to publishing a book than writing it and slapping a cover on it.