After I wrote my memoir, 'A Long Way Gone,' I was a bit exhausted. I didn't want to write another memoir; I felt that it might not be sane for one to speak about himself for many, many, many years in a row. At the same time, I felt the story of 'Radi...
Each of my books has taken me a different length of time to write - eight months for 'Seesaw Girl,' eight months for 'Shard,' three years for 'When My Name Was Keoko!' The publisher takes another year and a half to work on the book, so altogether eac...
I talk to my readers on social networking sites, but I never tell them what the book is about. Writing is lonely, so from time to time I talk to them on the Internet. It's like chatting at a bar without leaving your office. I talk with them about a l...
Each time I write a new piece, whether a novel, a picture book, a speech or anything, really, it has so much to do with what I'm going through personally or a problem I'm trying to work out. When I wrote my novel 'Baby,' my three children had all jus...
I'm not confident, and yet I'm oddly confident. You have to have a certain amount of ego to be a writer in the first place, and to write things that might be controversial. I've wasted a lot of time worrying about it: am I tough enough to do it? Well...
An evil fate has deprived me of the full use of my right hand, so that I am not able to play my compositions as I feel them. The trouble with my hand is that certain fingers have become so weak, probably through writing and playing too much at one ti...
Because I spend so much time traveling, I tend to do most of my reading on the same iPad on which I write. For me, it's words, not paper, that matter most in the end. This practice has had the additional benefit of greatly reducing the time I spend s...
Proust writes, he remembers, physically. He depends on his body to give him the information that will bring him to the past. His book is called 'In Search of Lost Time,' and he does it through the senses. He does it through smell. He does it through ...
[subtitled version] [the students are writing an examination] Pépinot enfant: Leclerc! Leclerc: What? Pépinot enfant: Are we still friends? Leclerc: Sure, why? Pépinot enfant: How much is 5 plus 3? Leclerc: 53. Pépinot enfant: You sure? Leclerc: ...
Captain Ramius: Ryan, sit here. Jack Ryan: I'm not a Naval officer! I'm with the CIA! Captain Ramius: CIA? Jack Ryan: I'm not an agent, I just write books for the CIA! Captain Ramius: Whatever. Sit here and do exactly what I tell you.
[At the gravesite of his father] Ratso Rizzo: He was even dumber than you. He couldn't even write his own name. "X," that's what it ought to say on that goddamn headstone, one big lousy "X". Just like our dump. Condemned by order of City Hall.
[King is writing a letter to his girlfriend] Francis: It ain't D-E-R-E, it's D-E-A-R. And "Sarah" ain't got no two R's, King. Damn, you dumb! King: It don't make no difference. She know what I mean. She don't read too good nohow.
Ryad: [letter to Malik] It was great getting your letter. First, I hear from you. Second, I see you've made a lot of fucking progress. You write like a pro and I'm glad. At least I served a purpose. I can tell you now, it was no piece of cake.
Joe Gillis: Tell her, Max. C'mon, do her that favor. Tell her there isn't going to be any picture. Tell her there are no fan letters other than the ones you write. Norma Desmond: It's not true! Max! Max Von Mayerling: Madame is the greatest star of t...
Album sales have collapsed, with few artists making money from albums; touring is more lucrative. But I'm 53 now and won't be able to tour forever, so a logical step is to get into writing film scores. Trouble is, you need to be somewhere which has a...
The one author who has influenced my writing the most is the English writer John Fowles, who wrote 'The French Lieutenant's Woman,' 'The Magus,' 'The Collector,' and other novels. None of his books is like any other. He continually challenges himself...
When I was in college at Carnegie Mellon, I wanted to be a chemist. So I became one. I worked in a laboratory and went to graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. Then I taught science at a private girls' school. I had three children and wait...
For years I've wanted to write a book about mummies, and had been following the science of mummy CT scans when the premise for 'The Keepsake' occurred to me: what if an 'ancient' mummy turns out to have a bullet in its leg? How does a modern murder v...
Some say I'm an overnight success. Well, that was a very long night that lasted about 10 years. But while I do, of course, now feel the pressure having had books that have been very successful, I just know I have to concentrate on writing for myself....
I was writing full time after quitting a job as a high school English teacher, and I hadn't been able to sell anything, and my bank account was down to zero, and all of my friends were like 'What are you doing in the basement, when are you going to g...
I would love to continue in music, with writing... but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go g...
