Christina Baker Kline Quotes

I listen like mad to any conversation taking place next to me just trying to hear why this is funny. Women's restrooms are especially great. I wash my hands twice waiting for people to come in and start talking.

Some writers like to work in other places like coffee shops, but I can't - I'd end up people-watching. And if I were at a bookstore, I'd be reading. Sometimes I have some music on, but usually I like it quiet.

I like to go out and write. So I'll often go to a Starbucks or a local coffee bar, and I'll sit there and I'll write. I can write pretty much anywhere.

I spend my time sitting in train stations, parks, parking lots, cafes, just looking at people - eavesdropping, basically. I'm vulnerable to all of it.

Eavesdrop and write it down from memory - gives you a stronger sense of how people talk and what their concerns are. I love to eavesdrop!

People inspire me. Everyone is such an individual and has unique stories. I'm a voyeur. I eavesdrop. Sometimes I ask questions. And sometimes people just want to tell me their stories.

When I think about my ideal free day, it usually involves going into London and sitting in a nice coffeehouse with cake and coffee, but I would probably still have my notebook in my pocket.

I love watching people, and that's what I do; just go for a walk at about 4 o'clock, and go down a busy street, where you see people coming out of school and you get a glimpse of their lives, what they're talking about.

I have a group of cafes and coffee shops that I go to regularly. They usually have an area where I can plug in my computer and have a corner seat where I can do a couple hours of writing or whatever, even the noise of the surrounding people walking by. Those things are the things that stimulate me into writing.

I've been known to write on the Underground in London and on the subway in New York. I have two or three cafes in Paris that I go into. I find a corner with a little shade, and I can work.

Coffee shops are everywhere, especially in Los Angeles, chock full of sad sacks desperate to make sure their screenplays make it into the right hands... or any hands, for that matter. The one thing that makes a coffee shop truly great, though, is charm.

I love going to coffee shops and just sitting and listening.

I write in coffee shops, libraries, parks, museums. I get antsy and then get on my bike and go someplace else, letting the ideas spin around in my head as I dodge taxis.

When I was in fourth grade, a novelist came to talk to my English class. She told us that being an author meant sitting at the kitchen table in pajamas, drinking tea with the dogs at your feet.

We do a lot of bird-watching up in the country, but we almost never have a chance to people-watch. There simply aren't enough human beings up here: there is nowhere you can park yourself with a cup of coffee and observe the species on parade.

I usually write away from home, in coffee shops, on trains, on planes, in friends' houses. I like places where there's stuff going on that you can lift your eyes, see something interesting, overhear a conversation.

I've never tried writing at a coffeehouse. I just know instinctively it's not for me.

I wrote all four of my books at Starbucks.

I go to coffee shops for my outlet. Which is just not healthy at all.

I can have people around a lot more because I'm not always chasing them away so I can work on my novel. My non-novel, I mean.

Supposedly, some writers work in rowdy coffee shops or compose whole novels to Megadeth, but when I write, I wear a pair of chainsaw operator's earmuffs.

I write in public libraries and sometimes coffee shops. I can't write at home and gave up trying long ago. I need activity around me that I'm forced to block out. It helps me focus.

I like going out and looking at people, and they inspire me so much.

To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations.

I think we should have more coffeehouses, more cafes, more "third places." More places where people can get together that's not work, not home, and where they can interact with people who are different from them.