Susan Isaacs Quotes

Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.

I think writing is such a great talent, and if I was better, I would love to be a writer.

The novel is resilient, and so are novelists.

I work with writers whom I believe to be true storytellers. And because I'm a writer, I pay very keen attention to their vision. I find that so fueling creatively because, in telling those stories, you use everything you've got. You come away with battle scars. It's gratifying and invigorating.

I find contentment in the craft of writing and fulfillment in self-expression.

For the years I spent working on it, 'Constellation' was the only novel I knew how to write, so maybe I still abided by the maxim? Regardless, I prefer the maxim: Write what you want to know, rather than what you already know.

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

I've always been a writer.

When I started to write, I realised that you need a bit of both: the overall context as well as the individual's experience.

I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

The cool thing about being a songwriter, or a writer, I guess, in general, you can take on a lot of different things, experience a lot of different things, just by writing about them.

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.

I am a writer - that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

I'm a writer, and the subject is less important than the act of writing itself.

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.

Writing is the beast unto itself.

Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.

When I'm sitting writing, I know that something works if I've made myself cry, or laugh, or have a visceral emotion.

I'm one of those sad cases who've never wanted to be anything but a writer. I started writing my first novel when I was five years old. I have no idea what it was about, but I do remember spending considerable time trying to get the title right, though this had more to do with crayon colour than scansion.

The story wrote quickly. I called it 'Where You're From,' and I sent it out, as I had numerous other stories over the years. Except this time I got a letter back saying that it would be published. Someone out there had liked the story. I was thirty-one years old.

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

Writing a novel is like knocking on a door that will never open. You are so desperate to get in, you will say or do anything. You feel: please take my novel.

What I do is write, and I try to write as closely as I can into what I call 'the mystery.'