Quotes about Writing

'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

I wrote all four of my books at Starbucks.

In a sense, I wrote the book about Jesus that I wanted to read.

I was incredibly determined - I wrote short stories, I wrote the beginnings of novels. I wrote a little children's book and sent it to the editor-in-chief of the children's division of Simon and Schuster and she asked me to write a little children's book for a series she was doing.

Christ himself wrote nothing, but furnished endless material for books and songs of gratitude and praise.

I started working for the 'NY Observer' when I was 33. After I had been writing for them for about a year and a half the editor said, 'Your stories are the most talked about stories in the 'Observer'; you should have your own column.'

I feel like some sort of fiction-writing hobo, jumping trains and always hoping I'll find a good place to start a fire in the next town. And I keep having these panicky episodes where I corner my husband and rant at him: 'I don't have anywhere to write! I can't write! I don't have a place to write!'

Some of what I wrote bordered on blasphemy....If there was a God, He would have to be truth. And in that case, candor--however impertinent--would be more pleasing to Him than posturing.

I hate thinking about it, teaching about it, and writing about it. But the plain truth is that hell is real and real people go there for eternity.

Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.

Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.

I have been somebody who has not written a great deal about the truth of my family's life.