Margaret Mahy Quotes

Read as much as you can, and then sit down and write.

I like learning things, and I like that writing comics is an excuse to look into new stuff and research and learn new things and hopefully put them in books.

I can give advice to anyone interested in writing in one word: Read! I think it's much more important to be a reader than to be a writer!

One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

Only a reader can become a writer. Develop a lively intellect and the ability to become interested in anything, no matter how mundane it might seem at first. Look for the story. Develop an eye for detail. Feed your mind and your brain: learn as much as you can about everything you can.

I am happy to keep working on books because I'm always reading, and I'm always trying to fall in love.

Reading is No. 1 - I have to read, or I can't write.

Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.

You can't write if you don't read.

What better way to expand your imagination than to read!

I just want to sit in my room and write books.

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction.

I wanted to become a writer. I enjoyed reading as a child.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

The best way to enhance a child's imagination is to make them read.

My passion has always been books and literature, and teaching.

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

Books are challenging and inspirational to me.

Each book first begins with a little idea.

I've always been a reader and a writer.

I was a book lover from the beginning. I loved, love, words and images and ideas, the ways a book can make you feel things deeply or help you understand something you never even knew there were words for.

Read everything! I believe that reading made me a writer.

While reading 'David Copperfield' in the middle of the night - probably because of the light, I had insomnia for the first time - I looked out of the window and thought, 'If this is what books can do, this is what I want to do.'

Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff.

I feel like reading really defined me as a writer because I lived my life outside of my own body for so much of my life and I loved it. I've always been a reader. I think living all those stories served me to naturally take that next step to creating.