Colson Whitehead Quotes

I never thought I could write this much and now that it's coming to an end, I feel sad that I have to stop, sort of the way you feel at the end of a really good book and you know you're going to miss the main character. But in this case, the main character is me! Myself. Joe (formerly JoDan) Bunch. —Joe Bunch

I've had a lot of very positive feedback about those stories, and seem to have struck upon something that most people feel. I can also tap dance, and don't know many other authors who can.

When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.

I'm constantly creating and writing.

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

To choose to write is to reject silence.

I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that's how one starts. Or I started.

Your literary style reflects your personality.

If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.

I write in my own journal when something extraordinary or funny happens. And there's some nice imagery in there. I don't think of what to do with it.

For many years I wanted to be a rock star but of course that didn't work out. I did however write on napkins and pieces of paper sentences and occurrences. I decided maybe I should write a book because I had been writing so much. I'm actually writing a book based on The Room that will hopefully be published soon.

They said I would never write this book. Well, f**k ’em – ’cos here it is. All I have to do now is remember something... Bollocks. I can’t remember anything.

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

Don't be pretentious is my first advice to young writers. This is the big problem - just because you're getting an MFA doesn't mean you have to write for the Academy. Be true to your personality. Don't temper your personality down with words. Don't build defensive fortresses around yourself with words - words are your friends.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

And so I write the way I myself would like the book to be – if I were a child. I write for the child within me.

As far as the writing goes, I started telling stories as soon as I could talk, and started writing them down as soon as I could string words together.

I am of the firm belief that everybody could write books and I never understand why they don't. After all, everybody speaks. Once the grammar has been learnt it is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.

It's not knowing how to write that makes you interesting, it's what you write.

I do like the idea of being an auteur in the sense of writing and being in your own stuff.

I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.

As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

I've always been a reader and a writer.

I want to write about grown-up things.