Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" You should not pay too much attention to what anyone tells you, including me. It's very, very important to follow your own map. "

Related Quotes:

" 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 got married at twenty-five and had children right away, so I didn't have the worry that I would never get to have children. "

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

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

" I know that sometimes it happens that a novelist is embarrassed about their early works. For me, it's the opposite: I believe 'Durable Goods' is the best thing I've written. "

" Never try to copy other writers, and never try to have a formula. It has to come from your heart and soul. "

" In writing a novel about George Sand, I hoped to present her as the talented, beguiling, complicated and occasionally infuriating woman I think she was, but I hope, too, that readers will enjoy the people she surrounded herself with. "

" 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. "

" When you've written long enough, you see that there's a common theme in your work. "

" I think conflict is one of the things that makes for a good story. "

" 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. "

" It usually takes about a year to write each book. I don't plan it that way. I don't set deadlines. If a book wants to take longer, it can. "

" If I'm on the road for Random House, I'm presenting a book with the hope people will buy it. "

" People see 'tradition' as something stultifying, old, and rigid, nothing that has meaning or application for us today. But families shouldn't have to follow the blueprint of the old. They can make family traditions out of whatever makes them feel comfortable and helps bring a sense of order and stability to their lives. "

" People don't take you seriously, so you have to take yourself seriously. "

" I just cannot stand an unmade bed. "

" In the most self-protective of ways, I don't think about the reader when I'm writing - I just think about the story. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" I love to listen to people talk, especially when they're being really honest and they're not trying to sound any particular way. "

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

" 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. "

" Writing was always a release for me, a great joy. It wasn't work. "

" I hope to show the great worth of women. So far as I'm concerned, we're still underappreciated. "

" I do think that there's an art form to parenting, and I have nothing but admiration for those who do it well. "

" Oftentimes, I need to write about something in order to understand it. "

" I never was a big believer that you can teach writing per se. "