Ann Brashares Quotes

When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.

For a dyed-in-the-wool author, nothing is as dead as a book once it is written. She is rather like a cat whose kittens have grown up.

At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude.

I really need so much time to really make headway on a novel that requires me to disappear from the world in a way.

Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.

When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.

How lucky am I? Quite often I speak at book festivals, and people ask me how I got published. There's people who have been working on a book for as long as ten years, and I feel like such a cow.

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.

Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to compare the pain.

Literary generations come and go, and each generation passeth away and is heard of no more. In the end, simply the making itself - of poems and stories and essays - delivers the only reward a writer can be sure of. And, perhaps, the only one that matters.

When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the window. The only way out is through the sentences.

I really absolutely loved writing my first book.

On the other hand, I mean, that is what writers have always been supposed to do, was to rely on their own devices and to - I mean, writing is a lonely business.

Going to so many book events keeps me connected with my readership while constantly reminding me that all the long hours at the drawing desk are worthwhile.

Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.

When I write, I tend to be quite cut off from the world. At that point of time, I'm not thinking about editors, publishers or readers. I write the story the way it comes to me.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

Being a writer is a very private, internal process. Ultimately I am more the writer, being an introvert.

It's kind of a lonely work, because you just have to keep your pole in the water. I always had a little routine of going into whatever room I was using at the time to write in and just staying in there till I felt like I got a bite.

Writing novels is sitting in a room by yourself for a year.

Much like film, authors spend a fair amount of time alone in the creative process, tossing their work out into what can feel like an abyss, void of real people.

You pour your soul into your book, but you never know how it will be received, and when people like your baby, it's a great feeling.

Writing a book is incredibly pleasurable, but very solitary. You have total control, but sometimes that can drive you insane.

You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely.

Writing is a lonely way of life. You shut yourself up in your study and work and work.