Celeste Ng Quotes

Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.

Every writer I know got their start in a library somewhere. We read a book, and we thought, 'I want to do that.'

We had to do the same thing here. To top that sequel was quite a task. Mike had a couple of good conceptual humour and character ideas, which got me back into it.

Why did I become a writer? Because I grew up in New York City, and there were seven newspapers in New York City, and my family was an inveterate reader of newspapers and I loved holding a paper in my hand. It was something sacred.

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.

I might be into writing... I'd like to try it someday. I always come up with some good ideas.

Oh, I think every author is inspired by all of the books that she reads.

My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down.

And out of a desire essentially to imitate what I was reading, I began to write, like a clever monkey.

Like many authors, I caught the writing bug during my teenage years. I don't remember the exact day or year, but I remember that reading S.E. Hinton's 'The Outsiders' sparked my interest in writing.

I know you're supposed to hide your influences, but I suppose I see writing as riffing, really, about whatever you have been reading or thinking about that day or that week.

Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.

I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.

I didn't start writing until late high school and then I was just diddling. Mainly I loved to read and my writing was an outgrowth of that.

My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.

Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.

I do believe that reading can help you understand what you're writing and see what others are doing. But sometimes the desire for more information can act as an inhibitor.

It usually helps me write by reading - somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

The idea is not enough. And the most annoying thing for me as a writer is that people will come up to me and say, 'Hey, I've got a great idea for a book. I'm not a writer, but I've got a great story.'

If you want to take writing on, you should pay writing the respect it deserves, which is to say, reading it.

I know some writers that have a million novel ideas, but I don't.

There are books that a writer undertakes because she wants to go on a journey, and there are journeys a writer undertakes because she wants to write a book.

Book ideas are like planes, lined up to approach the runway. Some never leave the gate, but others move quickly to the front of the line. It was like that with The Four Purposes. Honestly, I cannot remember the moment I had the idea for the book; perhaps because it emerged like a green shoot emerging from the soil of my subconscious. But it seemed important enough to begin the flow of words that eventually shaped themselves into this new book.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

I've always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I learned to read, I've wanted to share stories with others the way my favorite writers shared their stories with me.