Jerry Spinelli Quotes

I would be honored if someone reads my books and it inspires them to write their own work.

Sloane Crosley and David Sedaris are two of my favorite writers; they're the kind of writers who make you feel like, 'I can do this. I want to do this.'

Writing is something I want to explore. If I were to do it, I would want it to be not a book made by a YouTuber; I would really want to respect that craft of literature and just be an author.

I enjoy talking to groups who are interested in the writing process or the industry. I never teach - because truthfully, I don't know how it all works; it just does. Sort of magic-like. But I love to share my experiences and perspectives.

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

New fiction writers are a special breed in my estimation, and I never dreamed that so many people would be interested, but I remember being led by God.

Like many authors, I caught the writing bug during my teenage years. I don't remember the exact day or year, but I remember that reading S.E. Hinton's 'The Outsiders' sparked my interest in writing.

An author is somebody who writes a story. It doesn't matter if you're a kid or if you're a grown-up, it doesn't matter if the book gets published and lots of people get to read it, or if you make just one copy and you share that book with one friend.

As writers, we can't predict who might come along who might find our offerings valuable.

I'm a writer and this is what I love to do.

William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place.

My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.

I'm clearly not a writer, but I'm always a fan of them.

Every writer I know got their start in a library somewhere. We read a book, and we thought, 'I want to do that.'

I grew up around writers, and there was always a romance to them. They were charming. They would tell their stories of what they were working on, over the table.

The book that first made me want to be a writer is Flannery O'Connor's short story collection 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find.'

Just as readers often turn into writers, novel-writers often become novel-reviewers.

I think that I had read so much fiction that the craft itself sort of sank into me. I didn't read any 'how to' books or attend any popular-fiction-writing classes or have a critique group. For many years into my writing, I didn't even know another author. For me, a lot of reading was the best teacher.

A lot of the writers I've known for 20 years, who used to say, 'Maybe they're right - the novel is dead!' - well, now they don't feel that it's necessarily the biggest job or most sacred calling on the planet. But it's definitely a real thing - it's always been here, always will be here, and one might just as well buckle down and get to work.

Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.

I have come to understand and appreciate writers much more recently since I started working on a book last fall. Before that, I thought golf writers got up every morning, played a round of golf, had lunch, showed up for our last three holes and then went to dinner.

I like being a writer.

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

Novel writing is solitary work.

So, I guess motherhood and the threat of not being able to pay my rent inspired me to be a novelist. But as far as what inspired me to be a writer, it's the stories. It sounds very cliched, but the stories rise up and demand to be told. They always have done, long before I became a writer.