Nabokov, who I loved more than any other writer when I was young, had such contempt for dialogue. When I was younger, I never wrote a word of dialogue because of him. I thought it was a childish part of a novel.
I think one of my better gifts as a writer is empathy.
My wife has been incredibly supportive of me as a writer. Trying really hard to make sure I get the space and time I need to work as a writer and being willing to make some of the sacrifices that you have to make to live the life of an artist.
The thing is, if you make best-sellerdom your goal, you're going to be in trouble. It's a very nice thing to have happen, but if one makes that a goal like, say, a literary writer has the goal of getting the Pulitzer Prize, that's so unpredictable.
A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.
Next to the writer of real estate advertisements, the autobiographer is the most suspect of prose artists.
My assignment is what every writer's assignment is: tell the truth of his own time.
I just feel the need as a writer to try something kind of deep and fulfilling.
I think you have an obligation to share what you know as a writer.
I'm not a writer that writes every day. I just kind of have ideas. I jot them down when I have them, and when I have enough, I just start. And for me, I start more around noon, and I'm all about feeling. Once there's a theme, I can't not write.
I never thought I'd be a writer. I never thought I'd be able to read a book, let alone write one. So if books like this inspire kids to write, or even read a whole book, I think it's good.
The career of a writer is comparable to that of a woman of easy virtue. You write first for pleasure, later for the pleasure of others and finally for money.
Sometimes, a writer's life alone can tell a story.
Social media is a giant distraction to the ultimate aim, which is honing your craft as a songwriter. There are people who are exceptional at it, however, and if you can do both things, then that's fantastic, but if you are a writer, the time is better spent on a clever lyric than a clever tweet.
The book I always say that influenced me, subconsciously, because at the time I didn't know I wanted to be a writer, was William Goldman's 'Marathon Man.' That was the first adult thriller that I loved. I read it when I was 15 or so, when my father gave it to me.
Nobody can take what I love away from me. I would like to believe that love is the only energy I've ever used as a writer. I've never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.
All of us want to be Superman when we grow up, fighting for truth and justice. That's part of what drives me as a writer.
The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.
People are both more willing and less willing to talk to you when you're a writer.
What's funny about the slacker thing, people project an image of what they think a musician is: young, slack, unemployed - like a really romantic idea of a poet, writer or musician - which isn't really true a lot of the time. I don't reckon you would know anything about me if I wasn't moderately hard-working.
Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer.
I feel like the writer observing the grief, but it is difficult to be detached from it.
A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.
First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.
I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.
A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.
To begin impatiently is the worst mistake a writer can make.
The First Amendment has the same role in my life as a citizen and a writer as the sun has in our ecosystem.
I'm a writer; I like to retain subtlety and nuance.
My dad, being a jingle writer, and my mom, being a jingle singer, they hooked me up with some people when I was a kid that worked with children's jingle singing groups. I used to sing jingles as a kid.
For a long period in my life - it lasted about 10 years - I had writer's block.
I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write.
The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises.
The main engagement of the writer is towards truthfulness; therefore he must keep his mind and his judgement free.
Every writer I know got their start in a library somewhere. We read a book, and we thought, 'I want to do that.'
A novel is a relationship, you know? When you read a book, the writer has done half the work, and you're doing half the work. You're providing the imagination; the words are turning into pictures in your mind. There's an active relationship that's going on.
