Daniel Pinkwater Quotes

I don't know how I do it, but I've written about everything. I've written about my shoes.

I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing.

Everyone thinks when they start writing that they can't do it. I was lucky. My sister Delia was the most important person in terms of encouraging me.

Writing is a lot of fun for me; that's not to say it's easy, but I really do enjoy it.

I taught elementary school and painted apartments for ten years. Now I write full-time and never have to change a thing I write. Every book comes to me in a flash of inspiration and takes me about two seconds to finish. The longer books, like the 'Time Warp Trio' novels, take a little longer to write - more like four seconds.

I don't think many of us launched ourselves into the world of writing books fully formed.

I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.

Writing a book is an emotional odyssey, sometimes exhilarating, other times deflating.

I think 'Hollow City' only took a year and a half to write... but it felt like two and a half!

I didn't know how to be a writer. But I thought, 'I can do this.'

Not intending to be funny: I sit at the keyboard, put my fingers on the keys and go. To me, it's the real secret of writing. Put yourself in front of the screen or the blank sheet of paper and get to work.

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

Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me.

Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

I was very fortunate that my first novel captivated the imaginations of so many readers who asked for a sequel. After that, one book led to another as I discovered other facets to my characters I wanted to investigate further.

One of the big breakthroughs I had as a writer was when I stopped agonising over every word.

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.

For the novels I wrote before selling anything, I didn't outline much. I had a vague idea of the story.

Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.

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

To some extent, all authors are a little schizophrenic. We lead most of our lives in solitary confinement, living and breathing the books that we're writing.

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.

I was quite a reader before I became a writer.