Writing Magic Quotes

Writing is such a strange, utterly mysterious process. First, there was nothing; then, suddenly, there was something. I don't know where thoughts are born. Where the hell does it come from? I don't know. I really don't know.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

I used to think that most published writers, the ones I admired, had a muse, or a special connection to the universe, to nature, or to aliens - something inaccessible to me that caused their prose to flow onto the page, already perfect.

There's a powerful magic about being a writer that I still marvel at.

The act of writing surprises me all the time. A miraculous thing happens when you have an idea and you want to convert it into words... and then you start to create a work of art, and that's another miracle, and it remains mysterious to the writer, or to this writer anyway.

Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience. It's like the characters have come alive and are sitting on my shoulder talking to me, telling me their tales.

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it.

The magic of the pen lies in the concentration of your thoughts upon one object.

With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.

There is a kind of mysticism to writing.

When the script is finished, and you're sitting around at a table read, and all the actors are reading the words that you've written, and you're hearing it out loud for the first time, that is always, every single time, no matter what, a magical process.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.

I am always worried that over-planning and outlining will kill the magic of writing; most of the world I created in 'California' occurred via good old sexy sentence-making.

I hope the wonder of what happens to my characters never goes away. That yearning keeps me writing.

The experience of writing 'The Kite Runner' is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again.

I decided to become an author when my grandmother taught me to write, when I was six. I can still recall the sensation of being able to turn words into stories. It was a miracle.

I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.

As artists, we are so not in control most of the time of the content or the narrative of our characters, and sometimes writing takes a turn and it's not something we necessarily have control over. It's just a lot of random dumb luck, so when things click, you've just got to enjoy it.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Enchantment can be done with writing but I think enchantment is basically a prospective or an operating system for life. That you can enchant a person who is assigning your airplane seat, your hotel room, your waiter, your waitress.

What I like about writing is the sense of godlike power it gives you.

I think we writers are very superstitious. We don't know why it's working when it's working, so we attach cause and effect.

When you're a writer, if you're very lucky, you create these characters that you fall in love with, and you feel like they're guiding you rather than you guiding them.

Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

Hemingway and Saroyan had the line, the magic of it. The problem was that Hemingway didn't know how to laugh and Saroyan was filled with sugar.