Jonathan Carroll Quotes

I don't write for any particular kind of person.

If I don't know who I'm writing for, I make it up and pick somebody I'm writing for. That's really the only way to do it.

Doing interesting things and then writing about them is the best way to become a good writer.

I write what I'd like to read and just hope that, along the way, others might like to read them, too.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

I write what's given me to write.

The poet does not know - often he will never know - whom he really writes for.

So much of my own life inspires what I write. Whether it's work, family, friends, motherhood, I am a writer who tends to write what she knows. In 'Revenge Wears Prada,' a great deal of my own life finds its way into the book.

I write to be read. I'm quite direct about that. I'm not writing to thrill colleagues or to impress the professors at the University of Iowa; that's not my goal.

I write out of my intellectual experience.

I'm sure every author has their own process.

When I write, I work off of a theme, an emotion, a narrative - thinking of it and then expounding on it.

As an observer, I'm analysing my reactions, I guess, and my thinking; but about the process of writing... I am not very talented at talking about what I do as a writer.

It usually takes about a year to write each book. I don't plan it that way. I don't set deadlines. If a book wants to take longer, it can.

If you're mostly a writer - if your point of departure is writing something - which for a writer/director is sort of where you start, you're really influenced by the writers you love one way or another.

I don't consciously think of any certain direction when I'm writing. I only try not to be repetitive or redundant.

People don't stress enough that when they're writing lyrics, they are writing.

I tend to get quite close to the songs because I've always been the main songwriter.

I realized that even though I had this urge, this longing, to write about other people, in order for it to be emotionally gripping, I needed to be in there somehow.

Writers are, for the most part, crazy people. We're like Hephaestus of the forge. We're gnarled. We're curled over. We walk with a limp.

If you write for somebody that you know, then your job is so much easier.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

There are some movies you do for the character; there are some movies you do for the people.

To develop your own voice, you have to keep writing a ton, and this is something where I think Twitter is helpful. I use it to write a ton of jokes. You have to write a ton of bad stuff before you know what you're good at. And that's what some people I think have trouble with, the thought of getting past the bad stuff.