Quotes about Writing

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.

Most of my work is done before we start shooting, preparation work, so my normal day begins when I start writing, it might even be the night before.

I'd been in college studying English creative writing and history when I made the decision to join the Marines in the runup to the Iraq war.

I have a much greater ambition to be the best racket player than the best prose writer.

Writing is a hard business...but nothing makes you feel better.

The person who writes the bank's commercials is not the person who makes the loans.

I tend to write about my anxieties - it's what I'm afraid will happen. And I write a story working it out.

Writing is like anything else - the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you'll be about what's going to happen to it, where it's going, what it sounds like, whether it's right.

There's a tradition in war writing that the veteran goes over and sees the truth of war and comes back. And I'm skeptical of that.

I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.

Now and then when I am writing, I automatically do a small drawing, such as I sent you lately. I did one this morning representing Elijah in the desert under an orange sky, with some hawthorns in the foreground. It is nothing special, but I see it all so clearly before me, and I think that at such moments I could speak about it enthusiastically - may it be given me to do so later on.

I am writing to Russell at the same time. I think we know, don't we, that the English, the Yankees, have this much in common with the Dutch, that their charity…is very Christian. Now, the rest of us not being very good Christians…That's what I can't put out of my head writing again like this.