Rebecca Solnit Quotes

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

'Fire and Hemlock' is the reason I'm a writer.

I'm sure it came as no surprise to my friends and family when I became an illustrator and then a writer because, from about the age of five, I was one of those children who always had his nose in a book.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.

I never thought I'd be a writer. I never thought I'd be able to read a book, let alone write one. So if books like this inspire kids to write, or even read a whole book, I think it's good.

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.

I might be into writing... I'd like to try it someday. I always come up with some good ideas.

Had I not had children of my own, I would have never written books for children, nor would I have been capable of doing so.

When I was in my late twenties, a friend suggested that, since I was an avid SF reader and had been since I was barely a teenager, that since it didn't look like the poetry was going where I wanted, I might try writing a science fiction story. I did, and the first story I ever wrote was 'The Great American Economy.'

Some people read an interesting or provocative newspaper article, and that's the end of that. A writer reads such an article, and her imagination gets fired up. Questions occur to her. She might feel an urge to finish the story that the article suggests.

I have notebooks all over the place. I write little stories for my cabaret.

The thing that inspires me most is reading and just observing the people around me. I think those are the two things that make me want to write.

I read books when I was a kid, lots of books. Books always seemed like magic to me. They took you to the most amazing places. When I got older, I realized that I couldn't find books that took me to all of the places I wanted to go. To go to those places, I had to write some books myself.

Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go.

The book that made me want to be a writer in the first place was Gone with the Wind - I read it and wanted to create a whole world out of words, too.

The writing itself is the thing that generates stories for me.

I don't base my books on my life (thank goodness) and I don't pick the topic first. In fact, the topic picks me - via a question I can't answer as a mom, a wife, a woman, an American. I find myself wondering "What if..." and it blossoms into a whole novel.

Sometimes a story idea will come to me, and suddenly I've figured out the whole thing, and I feel like I'm collaborating with something other than myself.

If something depressing is happening, that's gold. That's the best possible situation you could be in. But if that doesn't happen, you just have to make up stuff - it's more fun because you have more freedom with what you can write about. You can invent characters and situations. It's actually easier.

Writing, even though it's hard work, is really a joy when you get these characters to come alive. It's hard to trace where they come from. I can't say that I am sitting here one night at nine o'clock and that a character occurs to me. The magic for me happens at the typewriter.

One of the fun things about play is making up stories.

Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate for our dreams.

When I write, I never know the endings. What I think works in [my] stories is the fact that when I write, I really want to find out what is going on-I'm writing for myself as a reader. It's like when you dream a dream. I want to know what's behind the door. If I navigate, it's from a place that's totally intuitive.