Charles McCarry Quotes

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don't think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing.

I've discovered as an author that the process of writing a novel becomes harder over time, not easier. I used to think the reverse must be true, that it would be like any task, and the more I practiced, the more adept I'd become.

I feel more comfortable each time I sit down to write, but I'm determined to get better and better.

If you write enough, you begin to learn to do things. But in a way, you do start from zero each time.

You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.

Many writers are afraid of writing something bad, so they don't try or give up when their efforts don't lead to a masterpiece right away. If you work at it, you will improve.

I thought I could write. So it was my intention to start off as a writer. But I wasn't really great at delivering the word at the end of the day.

I find writing really difficult - definitely the most difficult of all the things I do.

The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.

But, if there's any aspect of my career that needs attention, it's writing.

One of the things you get to do as a writer is that you get to learn new stuff all the time, and I hope that I'm a better writer when I'm 70 than I was when I was 30. That's one of the great things about a literary career.

For me, writing never gets easier. It's always hard work. It doesn't matter how many words you wrote the day before, or how many novels you've completed in the last decade: every day you start fresh again with that same blank page, or that same blank screen.

I'm still very much in the apprentice stage of writing. I read somewhere that you need to write a million words before you know what you're doing - so I'm headed that way, but I'm nowhere near there.

Of course there's pressure, and it's still there with every book. Each one is harder to write than the last, basically because you're always trying to write a better book. You won't always succeed, of course, but that has to be what you're shooting for.

'Baker Towers' is the book I've always known I would write, but it wasn't an easy book to do.

I think if you write for long enough, you eventually have a problem with everything, because you start figuring out where you could be doing better. But as far back as I can trace, I always wrote clear, grammatical prose.

I don't think many of us launched ourselves into the world of writing books fully formed.

Reading while I'm writing ideally inspires my competitive side. When I read great writers, I want to be a better writer.

I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

Writing is not getting any easier or harder. I think I know what I want more, I know what I'm looking for.

For me, my writing benefits from my experience.

Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death.

I never have found out all I want to know about writing and realize I never will.