John le Carre Quotes

I finish the book so I can see how it's going to end. I write that first sentence, and if it's the right first sentence, it leads to the right second sentence and three years later you have a 500-page manuscript, but it really is like going on a trip, going on a journey. It's a voyage.

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.

If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.

I try to create new characters in each book I write. That's what makes writing fun and interesting for me.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.

The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.

I write books that way - I put a first line down and say, "Where does this go?"

I'm writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a writer.

As much fun as it is to read a book, writing a book is one level deeper than that.

For the years I spent working on it, 'Constellation' was the only novel I knew how to write, so maybe I still abided by the maxim? Regardless, I prefer the maxim: Write what you want to know, rather than what you already know.

I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.

I should tell you that many people think that authors just cut and paste from real life into books. It doesn't work quite that way.

People are always thinking that I'm the main character in my books, but each one has been different, and sometimes they've been men.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.

'What It Is' was based on this class I've been teaching for 10 years - I wanted to write a book about writing that didn't mention stuff like story structure, protagonists, and all those things that we know about only because they already exist in stories.

Even though I don't write about things that come from my life because I'm lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that's really what being a writer is, probably.

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and reading even before that. My mom still has stories that I wrote when I was in kindergarten. I was a reader and a re-reader. That's the main reason I became a writer.

It's that drama that drives authors, you know.

I had novels to write, so I wrote them.