Jasper Fforde Quotes

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will not get any criticism. I might as well write the book that I want to write.

I hardly ever think about audience. I just try to tell a story for me. I write the kind of story I would like to read.

I've found through experience that I'm only good when I'm writing something that, in essence, only I could write. The times I've written for hire, for other people, I don't think I've done very well.

I learned not to care ... and to write for an imaginary reader whose tastes were similar to my own.

I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that's awfully vague.

The fun thing about song writing is that it's just creative. It can be whatever you want it to be. For me, I'm really protective of that. I'm not going to write something because I feel like it fits here or it fits there - I just want to write music that feels good to me, you know?

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

You can't tell someone how to write their own book.

The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.

It might be more difficult because you haven't got a book or a prop, but for the most part I like to write unpaid... initially and my own stories.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

I wasn't quite used to writing a diary - I didn't understand why people did it - but I wrote down notes and they went into a poem.

You write things that are of interest to you. There's no focus group.

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

That's how it always is with me: the thing that sets me down to start writing is usually not what I end up doing. Because, as much as I love genre, and I try to deliver the goods, I go off from it. I go do my own thing.

I've never written for anybody else. For me, it was a challenge. I write for me. I don't write for anybody else. And what was good about it was that I was writing for somebody I knew. I knew what my mother thinks and how she feels. So it was finding that creative spirit to write about my mother.

I don't ever try to anticipate my audience. I just write the songs I want to write, and hope people like 'em.

The less attention I pay to what people want and the more attention I pay to just writing the book I want to write, the better I do.

Do not write to impress others. Authors who write to impress people have difficulty remaining true to themselves. A better path is to write what pleases you and pray that there are others like you. Your first and most important reader is you. If you write a book that pleases you, at least you know one person will like it.

You'll go mad trying to figure out what people want. I don't bother. I write the stories I want to read.

I tell the stories that are of interest to me.

And write what you love - don't feel pressured to write serious prose if what you like is to be funny.

If you're writing, you're starting in private. It can really be this amazing, private, freeing experience. Forget that it's for other people - that comes in later.

I just write what I want to write.

I write what I'm interested in.