Zadie Smith Quotes

The most common thing I find is very brilliant, acute, young people who want to become writers but they are not writing. You know, they really badly want to write a book but they are not writing it. The only advice I can give them is to just write it, get to the end of it. And, you know, if it's not good enough, write another one.

I write every day. I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.

At the outset, my notion of being a writer was that you would have moments of inspiration and moments of frustration, when you'd crumple up your pages and toss them away. On one side, the dustbin would fill up, and on the other side, pages would rise into a novel.

For any writers at all, read everything you can and then put your butt in the chair and write. That's all there is to it.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

The point always is to be writing something - it leads to more writing.

The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.

I'm very interested in writing - it just takes so much discipline, whether it's short stories or novels.

I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.

It's a lot to expect of yourself, to write a novel in a year. Anyway, you don't write a novel, you write a scene, and then another scene.

Write. Enjoy writing. Then, and only then, worry about the business end of it. Start loving your hobby, and then you can't go too wrong.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

Going off the road just leaves me more time to be a writer.

Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

I write everywhere. I've written books while I was on planes, at Disney World, and in multiple countries of which I am not a native. It can be a struggle to make word count sometimes, but I will persevere!

You write, hoping to write a good book; that's it.

I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft 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.

I always wrote. I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the '80s developing my craft as a writer.

Sometimes kids ask how I've been able to write so many books. The answer is simple: one word at a time. Which is another good lesson, I think. You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know how every story is going to end. You just have to take that next step, look for that next idea, write that next word.

There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.

The most important lesson my parents taught me is that writing is a job, one that requires discipline and commitment. Most of the time it's a fun job, a wonderful job, but sometimes it isn't, and those are the days that test you.