Aleksandar Hemon Quotes

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

The only real advice you can give anyone is to keep writing.

It's a lot to expect of yourself, to write a novel in a year. Anyway, you don't write a novel, you write a scene, and then another scene.

What it takes is to actually write: not to think about it, not to imagine it, not to talk about it, but to actually want to sit down and write. I'm lucky I learned that habit a really long time ago. I credit my mother with that. She was an English teacher, but she was a writer.

With the first novel, I had to tell myself, 'No one is ever going to read it, so you might as well just write it.' With the second, I was pretty sure someone was going to read it.

If I could say anything to aspiring writers, it's to keep your own counsel, first and foremost.

I write every day. I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.

Try to write at least 500 words a day. You may ditch 499 of them tomorrow, but you will still be moving forward.

I try very hard to write the best book I possibly can, every time.

For any writers at all, read everything you can and then put your butt in the chair and write. That's all there is to it.

The point always is to be writing something - it leads to more writing.

I'm so focused on trying to craft the story that I'm in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

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

I do have fun writing, and a long time ago, I told myself, 'You got to have fun at this, or it'll drive you nuts.'

I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.

Don't force yourself to write. Some people can write a novel in a few months, whereas for others it can take over a year. I'm lucky to be one of the former - but, even so, if I'm not in the mood to write, I won't. I'll go off, do something else and come back to it when I'm ready.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

I write everywhere. I've written books while I was on planes, at Disney World, and in multiple countries of which I am not a native. It can be a struggle to make word count sometimes, but I will persevere!

Don't romanticise your 'vocation.' You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle.' All that matters is what you leave on the page.