It’s rather fun writing a female spy, because she has so much more kit. Bond never carried a hair dryer or a makeup bag. And he certainly didn’t wear an uplift bra. – Helen Fielding
Most authors writing books like ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’ dream of doing what I was being asked to do. I didn’t like it. I’m good at giving advice, but doing it on TV and radio felt wrong, and when people resisted my point of view, I was like, ‘Why am I doing this? This was not the plan.’ So I stopped. It didn’t make me feel good. – Greg Behrendt
The language has got to be fully alive – I can’t bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don’t see why any reader should put up with it. – Helen Dunmore
Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear. – Helen Dunmore
I feel lucky that my career so far has included books for adults and books for kids. They’re equally important to me, and I hope I get to continue writing both. – Greg van Eekhout
I think it took me half a page of ‘Wolf Hall’ to think: ‘This is the novel I should have been writing all along.’ – Hilary Mantel
From my years of teaching creative writing, I know that new writers take the setting for granted, as simply a place to set the action, but setting is a vital element in fiction writing and deserves serious treatment. – Garry Disher
My father I liked, but it was only after his death that I got to know him by writing the play. – Hugh Leonard
Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me. – Haruki Murakami
I could list hundreds of words I’ve come up against in the course of my work that did not exist in the era of which I was writing and for which I never could find a suitably old-time, archaic or obsolete substitute. – Gary Jennings
I do think that the abiding mystery of my origins has definitely had a profound effect upon my writing. There is that thing in the back of my mind where I think I don’t really know who I am. And it may make it a little easier to shift around in my narrative voice. – Gillian Welch
When we’ve finished the current tour I’m going to go back to Italy and see if I can do some more writing. – Gerry Mulligan
Writing is fun – at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That’s easy to manage. – Haruki Murakami
While I’m writing, I’m also the first reader, and I want to write a book where I’m excited about what happens next. – Hakan Nesser
As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note. – Georges Bizet
I’m not very happy idle. There’s always this voice in my head that says, ‘I should be writing.’ – Harlan Coben
The great liberation of imaginative writing is that you’re not held back by the facts. – Gerald Vizenor
Some writers and producers are currently writing a sitcom for me, so we’ll see what happens there. I’m somewhat reluctant to talk about some of the upcoming projects that I’m working on; I’ve a lot of stuff on the go, including five pictures that I’m looking at producing. – Gil Gerard
I think myself I ought to be shot for writing such nonsense… But it’s unquestionably good escapist literature, and I think I should rather like it if I were sitting in an air-raid shelter or recovering from flu. – Georgette Heyer
I set out to write a screenplay but, since my early 20s, had dreamed of writing a novel. – Graeme Simsion
Every time I tried writing my own songs, they would come out very country. I couldn’t fight it, and the more I listened to country music, the more I loved it, and it just became very natural. – Hayley Orrantia
If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write. – Hugh Prather
The hardest thing about writing my second album is that I had 20 years to write my first album. – Halsey
Do not let any record company disturb your creative flow. You are not writing for the record company. You’re writing for the public. – Grandmaster Flash
Back in my 20s, when I wrote ‘A Place of Greater Safety,’ the French Revolution novel, I thought, ‘I’ll always have to write historical novels because I can’t do plots.’ But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things. – Hilary Mantel
Sometimes people ask, ‘Does writing make you happy?’ But I think that’s beside the point. It makes you agitated, and continually in a state where you’re off balance. You seldom feel serene or settled. – Hilary Mantel
Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing. – Hilaire Belloc
