Don DeLillo Quotes

I feel like they are two different things, and when I write books, they're just books. If they can be movies that's okay. But I would write a novel that couldn't be a film.

When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)

If the story is good enough, if it's imaginative enough, if it's moving enough it is going to reach deeper than the level of sheer information and change somebody's life two degrees. That is an enormous achievement.

I have no intention of becoming a shorthand author.

Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.

I think that as I continue to write, my writing I hope will become more controversial and more provocative.

A novel - it's also a way of attacking subjects that you cannot confront in the eye.

I've had so many experiences with film or musicals or books where I just walk away changed in some way. One of the things that makes me want to be a writer is to pour my heart into something and hope that I can affect someone in that same way.

There's more substance in my prose and my poetry than in all my films together. Writing is a more direct way of expressing yourself because, in cinema, you always have finances, organization, actors, technical apparatus and all that stuff coming in between.

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

What everybody is well advised to do is to not write about your own life, this is if you want to write fast. You will be writing about your own life anyway but you won't know it.

I think that every decision I make in my life is based off of an emotion - and it definitely hurts me in some situations, and helps in some situations, like obviously writing and stuff is my favourite thing to do because I get to use all of my emotions and express them in that way.

What I've always said was, hang in there, let me write what I want to write, and you'll probably like it.

I write not only what I want to read...I write all the things I should have been able to read.

When I finally got tired of arguing with her and decided to write a novel as if I was some kind of formulaic, genre writing drone, just to prove to her how awful it would be, I wrote the first book of the Dresden Files.

Many novelists say, "I'm not a political novelist" - myself included. That's a standard, even a default position. Whereas that divide between art and politics simply isn't possible in many countries. In Hungary, you couldn't be a fiction writer and then, when asked about politics, put your hands up in the air and say "But I'm not a political novelist." If you're a Chinese novelist, a novelist in a country where censorship is such an issue, how do you claim that politics has nothing to do with your writing? It's in your writing, it's shaping your words.

Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.

As much as I do love real-life stories they can often make you hurt in a way I'd rather not hurt. . . . For some reason, it's always the pain that gets you.

The thing that made me turn more towards writing was realizing how hard it was going to be to get a singular vision on film and how much more control I would have if I were writing novels.

I don't know what the definition of a short story is, and I don't even care to answer that question. That's something somebody in academia would think about. I just want to tell a story, and if people listen, and if it stays with you, it's a story.

Sometimes if there's a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself.

I just want to start writing, whether or not any of it is useable or marketable.

Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn't help you. Do it your own way. Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write.The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won't write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any.

I don't really have those kinds of intentions when I write a scene. I try to follow the internal logic of the fiction, rather than make an argument or an assertion.

Writing is primarily a sensuous and creative expression of life.