David Lagercrantz Quotes

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

I try to write like the writers I admire - I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase... So I'm always looking for that angle in my own work.

I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.

It's hard to read good fiction when I am writing, because if it is really good I catch myself sort of inadvertently imitating a great writer.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

'Dandelion Wine' became one of the few books that I returned to time and again, and while not anywhere near the story crafter as Mr. Bradbury, I hope I managed to absorb by osmosis some of his techniques.

My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.

Find a poet whose style you like, emulate that style, then deal with things that you know about - don't waste your time looking for your own style.' I wish I could remember who told me that, because I'd like to congraulate him. I've emulated all the old guys - Tennyson, Alexander Pope.

Whatever I'm reading at the moment seems to influence whatever I'm writing.

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

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.

When you're a mass-market writer, people think that you can just decide 'this happens, this happens, this happens', whereas with literary writers it's coming from their soul and their core. But with me it does come from my soul and my core, and my soul and my core often go AWOL, and then I've nothing to write.

The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern.

I love bouncing my words off of someone else's, and the fact that writing a story with someone else guarantees you'll get something you never, ever would have written on your own.

Most of us don't invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.

Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance.

Writing is just very difficult. I'm an adequate performer. And I think I have a special talent as an editor. Editing is what I do best.

Write down everything you can think of, no matter how stupid it seems. I always write down my thoughts throughout the day. Sometimes good things come out of it, and I'll find an idea to develop into a song, so my best advice is to try and draw inspiration from everyday things.

You have to search for the best writer - I'm not saying I'm the one, but it's a bad idea to just find the person who is a copycat of Stieg Larsson.

I'm an author who likes assignments, who needs suggestions, ideas I would never have thought of otherwise - then something happens inside my alien head. Other people have to decide whether or not I'm a good writer, but I do have the ability to write in different styles.

It's hard to say if actual places really affect the way you write.

I think that there are fiction writers for whom that works well. I could never do it. I feel as if, by the time I see that it's a poem, it's almost written in my head somewhere.

I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.