Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" There's no reason you should write any novel quickly. "

Related Quotes:

" I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there. "

" There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep. "

" I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through. "

" I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you'll recognize that and make the necessary revisions. "

" My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels - not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. "

" Half my life is an act of revision. "

" I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination. "

" So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion. "

" I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with. "

" I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand. "

" It's not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess I'm always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them. "

" I don't read anything electronically. I don't write electronically, either - except e-mails to my family and friends. I write in longhand. I have always written first drafts by hand, but I used to write subsequent drafts and insert pages on a typewriter. "

" If you're still wondering about details - how am I going to get these two to meet, or whatever - when you're writing, you can't pay proper attention to the sentences themselves. "

" And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you. "

" I grew up without a father, who was kept a mystery to me. There was a sense of uprootedness, things being one day here and the next day not; a sense anything could happen. Then, all of a sudden, my mother met my stepfather, and her life became happier, and my life changed, my name changed. "

" One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are. "

" I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography. "

" If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it. "

" I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful. I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs. "

" I sometimes think that what I do as a writer is make a kind of colouring book, where all the lines are there, and then you put in the colour. "

" I never wanted my kids to feel I was more interested in anything I was doing than I was in them. "

" You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. "

" I get up early. I like to read a little before anyone but the dog is up. I also like to read at night, not in bed but just before I go to bed. "

" I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story. "

" My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons. "

" I lived five years in the Midwest, and I loved it. The people were so nice. The people were so open. "

" Good habits are worth being fanatical about. "

" I don't think I've had a very interesting life, and I feel that is a great liberation. That gives me great freedom as a fiction writer. Nothing that happened holds any special tyranny over me. "

" I wasn't afraid of anything until I had a kid. Then I was terrified because immediately I could imagine a hundred ways in which I could not protect him. "

" When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. "