Quotes about Writing

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

So at 19, I faced my first blank page as a professional writer.

That has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world.

I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish - occasionally I do windows.

I have no ghost writers. I personally write every message and every piece of published mail.

I think everything we do, on one level or another, as writers, most of our writing is informed by our world view. It's informed by our own understanding of spirituality; things that matter, things that are important to us. I write about things that matter for me.

I don't write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear, and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses, he will endure or be forgotten.

No one writes for me exclusively, nor do lead roles come by that easily. 'Dulla Bhatti' was one, but I was so disappointed with the film.

I stay out of politics because if I begin thinking too much about politics, I'll probably... drop writing children's books and become a political cartoonist again.