Junot Diaz Quotes

I write four or five a books a year. That means that I usually have one on the go. I am fortunate in being able to write quickly - 1000 words an hour.

Everybody is different. Some writers can write reams of great books and then J. D. Salinger wrote just a few. Beethoven wrote nine symphonies. They were all phenomenal. Mozart wrote some 40 symphonies, and they were all phenomenal. That doesn't mean Beethoven was a lesser writer, it's just some guys are capable of more productivity, some guys take more time.

I don't set out to write a play a year. Sometimes I've written two plays a year. There was a period of a year and half when I only wrote half a play. If it depresses some critics that I seem prolific, well, that's their problem as much as mine.

In the time it takes American literary titan William H. Gass to write a novel, other artists have been born, completed their life's work and died. That may be an exaggeration, but only a slight one.

I write at a pace that suits me, and sometimes it's two books a year, but most often it's one.

I've written five books, a book every three years. I'm fairly lazy and it doesn't take that much...people who are not lazy are Isaac Asimov.

I reckon I can count on 30 more writing years, averaging a book a year (I can't keep up the 2-2.5 a year I used to do these days). And these days I've gotten round to wondering, for each new idea, "do I want to be remembered for this?" before I get to the point of spending a year on it.

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.

Well, first you have to love writing. A lot of authors love having written. But I enjoy the actual writing. Beside that, I think the main reason I can be so prolific is the huge amount of planning I do before I start to write. I do a very complete, chapter-by-chapter outline of every book I write. When I sit down to write, I already know everything that's going to happen in the book. This means I've done all the important thinking, and I can relax and enjoy the writing. I could never write so many books if I didn't outline them first.

I'm not a speed writer. I write slowly and revise obsessively. The end result tends to be good. That's where my strength is.

I'm astounded by people who take eighteen years to write something. That's how long it took that guy to write Madame Bovary, and was that ever on the best-seller list?

You're always told by your publisher that you must only write one book a year and some years you should perhaps write none at all.

I don't write as much now as I used to, but I write. The lines still come, maybe periodically, and I'll go through these little bursts of time where I write a lot of things then a long period of time where maybe I don't write anything.

I write slowly. I actually write quickly, but I throw out so much material.

Actually, the 14 novels were written over a period of just over 6 years.

I don't write quickly, and I don't want to.

As a songwriter, you might write every day and throughout the course of a year you might get four songs that are really special.

I seem to produce a novel approximately once every three years.

Most writers can write three times as many books as I have and still live a life.

And then I wrote my first autobiography when I - well, it was 23 years ago. And since then I've written about one book every two years.

I don't have a trunk of manuscripts.

I'm always writing new books so I don't dwell on the ones I've already done. I think that's a habit from being a newspaper guy because you're always writing columns and you can't reflect on the ones you've already done.

If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain. By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day and you aren’t disgusted with them until the book is finished, which will be in about six weeks.

I write a thousand words a day. Nothing will stop me, I mean nothing, until the book is finished. I'm disciplined in spite of myself.

No two books come out the same way. Some I write by the seat of my pants; others are planned in minute detail.