Courtney A. Kemp Quotes

When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

I like that original romance of having a pen and a legal pad and going anywhere in the world and being able to write a novel with just those two things.

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

What I found so captivating about the idea of being a writer was having the ability to write down all these things I made up in my head so other people could see them.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

I'm always writing. There is always a story brewing in my head.

When I started writing fiction, I knew how good it was immediately.

I get suggestions all the time. People feel quite free at events or even on the street to tell me what they think I should be writing. What I've learned, though, is that this thing, this connection, has to be in place for me to be able to kind of launch into a world imaginatively.

If you give me a typewriter and I'm having a good day, I can write a scene that will astonish its readers. That will perhaps make them laugh, perhaps make them cry - that will have some emotional clout to it. It doesn't cost much to do that.

I had no real idea I was going to become a writer. It was just a game for me. I just liked pretending, daydreaming and imagining.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

I pick up my pen. It flows. A building appears. There it is. There is nothing more to say.

I was always a writer, by which I mean I was always scribbling away, doing something with pen and paper.

I love writing, and I love the solitude of the writing, in that you're just sitting there creating something from nothing, or a new story for characters you love and care about.

When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!

Fall into your sentences; enjoy writing them. Love the world you are creating.

I have a great respect for people that write. I don't know how they do it every day... or do novels that they have to use their minds instead of just their memories. It's tough duty.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

My experience of fiction was, in the beginning, so exploratory. I wasn't sitting down to a desk at Yaddo with a month, thinking I have to have a draft of a novel.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

Blank paper has always inspired me.