Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I've always felt an overwhelming need to get out what was inside. The vehicle for me was words on paper - not speech, not art, not dance, not anything else. "

Related Quotes:

" Whenever I write a novel, most of the time it starts with barest slip of an idea. "

" Everybody complains about getting older, but I find it such a rich time of life. There are negative things about it, I suppose, but more than that, I'm finding it to be a very positive experience in which growth suggests itself in a much more alluring way than it did when I was young - isn't that funny? "

" I have not been in a book club where there were any men, and I have not, in fact, heard of book groups that were mixed. "

" As we continue to become a society of tweets, shorter and shorter messages, there's great value in the contemplation and reflection that comes from reading a long body of work. "

" It is one thing to see your friend dance around a table when she's 25, quite another thing to see her doing it when she's 62. "

" It is true that all mothers do things differently from their own mothers, but they don't necessarily do them better. "

" I tend not to write books that are really, really long, and I'm also a pretty fast writer. "

" If there were a category in the Olympics for laundry, my mother would have been a gold-medal winner. "

" Writers have a reputation for being distracted. That's because writers are distracted. They are always tuned into that other voice, the one in their head that rarely turns off. "

" My favorite splurge is homemade chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream or a Sausage McMuffin with egg or scalloped potatoes or turkey yanked right off the carcass and dipped in gravy or See's chocolate. "

" I always wrote as a vehicle for expression but did not try writing for publication until my mid-thirties, at which time I started writing for magazines. I wrote essays and then short stories, then moved into novels. "

" Writing is, of course, a solitary occupation. But for many writers, myself included, it's through writing that we make certain vital connections. "

" One of the great pleasures in writing 'The Dream Lover' was learning about some of the real people who populated George Sand's life. What a cast of characters! And what a pleasure to recreate them upon the page! "

" Some people read an interesting or provocative newspaper article, and that's the end of that. A writer reads such an article, and her imagination gets fired up. Questions occur to her. She might feel an urge to finish the story that the article suggests. "

" I just cannot stand an unmade bed. "

" A ritual or tradition can be as simple as something you do every night, like read a story to a small child, or something you do weekly, such as go out for Chinese food. "

" I'm the kind of person who is entertained watching someone simply be themselves, whether they're putting their children to bed or making dinner or sitting at the table reading the morning newspaper. "

" As for my 'real life,' yes, I do have friends who are different from me, and I find it refreshing being around them. "

" I've been to Iowa many times before. You have to love Iowa, or you're not an American. "

" Nurses don't get paid very much. It didn't take long to realize that I could make more as a writer. I loved nursing, but I loved writing more. "

" I suppose writing nonfiction did prepare me for writing fiction. Whenever you write anything, you're honing your skills for writing anything else. "

" No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story. "

" Ultimately, the less I know about what I'm doing, the better the work is. "

" I think titles are extremely important for novels: They can set the tone, tip you off, serve as shorthand for what the essential contents are. "

" I remember, as a child, wanting all the time to buy my parents presents. I stood around forlornly in fancy shops, unable to afford a single thing. "

" No matter what you write, you need an active imagination. "

" If I don't feel like writing on a certain day, I just go to the cafe and hang around. "

" For me as a writer, it's so joyful to know that someone hears and responds to what I write. "

" Ideas come from life: what happens in mine, what I see happening in others', mixed with a great deal of imagination. I might see a person in a grocery store and build a whole character and life out of what's in her basket. "

" I don't really like questions about the writing process, because the truth is I don't know how I write. "