Rebecca Stead Quotes

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try.

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.

I used to think that when I finished a book, I was finished with it. But it's like a wonderful Hydra. Every time a head disappears, more heads appear, so I will be writing for the rest of my life. The more books I write, the more books I find that I still have to write about. I use it like an inspiration, and that's wonderful.

My writing works best when I remember that bookish child who adored reading and gear the work toward him.

I cannot recall any moment of clarity about becoming a writer. I always liked to read. That's what did it.

Whatever I read went under my skin. I almost devoured the literature, which became like a road to discovery.

I can clearly trace my passion for reading back to the Jonesboro, Georgia, library, where for the first time in my life I had access to what seemed like an unlimited supply of books. This was where I discovered 'Encyclopedia Brown' and 'Nancy Drew,' 'Gone With the Wind' and 'Rebecca.' This was where I became inspired to be a writer.

I became a writer because I love to read, yet I never get to unless I'm reviewing a book or doing research.

In a way, 'Billy Elliot' was autobiographical. I can't dance, but I think his dancing was me discovering about writing and literature.

I like to believe, as a writer, that anybody who isn't a reader yet has just not found the right book.

I started off like everyone else does, slogging but having a compulsion to put words on paper. I didn't write or read horror or fantasy, other than children's fantasy, until I was in my teens.

I write what I'm interested in.

Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.

My first novel was a challenge to myself. No one had an inkling that I was working on it.

I have never met an author who did not read voraciously as a child.

Oh, I think every author is inspired by all of the books that she reads.

I really, honest to God, didn't know what to read until I was out of college and living in Boston, and someone said, 'Well, why don't you read Hemingway?' And I thought, 'OK. I guess I'll try this Hemingway fellow.'

I was as eager a writer as I was a reader.

Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.

I want to know why I read as a child with such a frantic appetite, why I sucked the words off the page with such an edge of desperation.

One of my favorite things I read was John Steinbeck's journals while he was writing 'East of Eden,' which was so cool.

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

I was passionate about reading from an early age, and I would always be carrying a different book each week.

I was completely devoted to reading and books from the age of seven. It took until I was 18 to have the confidence to write poetry.