When really writing I'm not a good friend. Because writing disorganizes the social self, you become atomized. It scrambles you, sometimes to the point that I'm incapable of speech. I feel that if I start speaking, I'll lose the writing, like getting off the treadmill.
It gives me confidence to know that what I'm writing has a veracity of its own without me having to invent it. When I'm writing fiction, I must believe it to be true, or I can see no point in it.
After each book, I get panicky. I don't love the reviews. I don't like going through all that, and you would think that, after almost 40 years of writing, I'd have got the hang of it.
As a writer, I can't really take days off. Writing is like creating an art. Once you stop writing, you can lose your rhythm and context, meaning that your writing may lose its power.
Although I think I'm relatively happy as a person, I think there's something unhappy at the root of all my writing. I'd say optimistic but unhappy. Nothing that's particularly original, other than that we're going to live and die, and terrible things happen.
Lyrics are so important, I hate every second of writing them, but it's something I take great pride in when it's finished.
Writing is just very difficult. I'm an adequate performer. And I think I have a special talent as an editor. Editing is what I do best.
Writing is harder than acting. I enjoy acting for just the brevity with which you can be in the experience of doing it. Writing is kind of more satisfying in that you're creating a world and doing something that feels bigger, but it's very time consuming and has a higher threshold for failure.
My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing.
You know, it's absolutely connected to The Mollusk in that, it's what we're writing after The Mollusk. A lot of this stuff reminds me of things on The Mollusk.
I'm always trying out new stuff onstage. That's where I do all my writing.
You don't want to start writing songs about how your Twitter followers are going up, because one day Twitter won't exist, and you'll feel like an idiot.
I'd been writing poems for many years, but most of them I didn't like. Then, when I was 23, I wrote one I did like, sent it to 'The Paris Review' - the highest publication I could think of - and they accepted it. No other moment in my literary life has quite come close to that.
The process of writing a book is so removed in my mind from the process of publishing it that I often forget for great stretches that I eventually hope to do the latter.
I knew that you couldn't make a living simply writing about the outdoors, so I made an effort from the beginning of my freelance career to write about other subjects.
My personality has two sides: a very social side and a reclusive side. I love writing fiction, although I can't imagine ever being locked up in a room writing all the time.
Part of making art is learning how you make it best. I'm not great at sitting down at a desk and writing for three hours. I write best verbally, talking through an idea with people, so I do my best work when I collaborate.
I'm writing all the time. I tend to work on at least two books simultaneously. I'll spend time with one, and then I'll spend time with the other. Finishing takes whatever time it takes.
Because I find writing painful, I try to get it over with as fast as possible. But I write every day, or I lose the thread.
I'm not a big believer in the idea of genre - I'm a fan of any writer who can pull me into compelling characters and stories - but I can't imagine I'll start writing domestic dramas any time soon.
Writing plays supplied for me everything that painting didn't, which is the ability to tell stories in real time, in a real space, in three dimensions, in flesh and blood. I realized I had been trying to cram all this narrative into my paintings, but ultimately painting was a static medium. So it just opened up this whole new door.
Writing isn't necessarily about what one knows but what one wants to know.
I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting.
I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end. I thought I would be a teacher, but I didn't really think about it in any practical way.
When I started writing seriously in high school, English was the language I had at my disposal - my Spanish was domestic, colloquial, and not particularly literary or sophisticated.
I had been laid off from 'Entertainment Weekly 'right before I started writing 'Gone Girl.'
My main object is to write, to keep learning. I always try to perfect my composition. But I do like writing film and opera music. I believe that it fulfills the needs of particular situations.
The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.
Long before I fell in love with writing, I fell in love with reading. Sometimes, honestly, I feel like I'm cheating on my first love when I settle into my office chair to start work on the latest manuscript.
Whether I'm writing a novel about a guy mourning the death of his father or whether I'm writing a show about people killing each other, you want to hear characters speak and be funny and witty.
I never thought it was unusual to write, and I've been writing or pretending to write since before I even started school.
There were 900 books on Washington when I began writing on him.
By the sheer act of writing, we are trying to place value on the stories that we're invested in.
I used to think I'd like to be a fireman - in fact, I still would - and the only drawback I could see was coming back to the firehouse, after a day of fighting fires, and still having to put in an eight-hour day writing.
The wonderful thing about writing fiction is that no one is stopping you. There's no one saying, 'You can't do that.'
I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.
