Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

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

Related Quotes:

" Traditions are the inventions of people who mean to routinely put love and comfort and meaning into their lives and in the lives of those they live with. "

" We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading. "

" 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 look to find the heart and soul of people, of my characters. I look for the truth of them and the truths about life that are presented through them. "

" I have always believed in helping people whose work I admire. "

" With 'Durable Goods,' I meant only to write about being an army brat. What emerged was a story about compassion - the need for it, the expression of it. "

" When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads. "

" 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! "

" I think writers are born, not made. "

" 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. "

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

" Women have a real talent for bearing up under hard times. "

" I can't decide if I'm a hippie or elegant older woman, a farmer's wife, a crazy person. "

" I think it's harder - much harder - to be a good parent than to write a book. "

" It feels like my books come true. I write these things, and then they kind of end up happening. I wasn't divorced, for example, when I wrote a book about divorce. "

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

" I think Chicago is the best city in the country, hands down, but I don't like the winter there anymore. "

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

" We're such imperfect beings. I think that's more often the case than not. "

" I find life a mix of humor and pathos, and all my books reflect that to one degree or another. "

" You need a place to work that works for you, and you need people to understand that when you are writing, you are doing a rarefied type of brain surgery and therefore should not be subject to a million random interruptions. "

" I never meant to write about the experience of losing a good friend to breast cancer when I was going through it. But after it was over, I realized that although something deeply sad had happened, something truly beautiful also had. "

" 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 nuts about the South - the people, the language, the food, the land, the stories and writers that come from there - but it's hard to know whether I'll use it as a location again. "

" The friends in my real life do tend to be smart and funny and creative. I am lucky! "

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

" Not being as self-contained as men, we need to share things: It's almost as though you only know what you feel about things after you share them with a woman. "

" I think the most important quality for a writer to have is empathy. "

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

" 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. "