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If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.
It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.
A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.
Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

























