Harvey Pekar Quotes

I always write tons of different styles.

Occasionally people ask me how it is I write different types of things, and my answer to that is it's very natural. You get bored writing one kind of thing all the time.

Poetry and prose are of equal importance to me as a reader, and there doesn't seem to be much difference in my own writing.

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

Don't let anyone tell you there's only one way to write.

Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.

I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.

If you want to be a writer, don't worry so much about writing. Read as much as you can. Read as many different writers as you can. Soak up the styles.

Some writers would be kinder than others, I'm sure. Hopefully they might describe my techniques as a mixture of tried and tested formulas - if it aint broke don't fix it - and unexpected twists.

I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist, I'm a writer.

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.

I think my fascination is less with genre figures than with writers in general.

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.

It takes a long, long time to write what I do write.

There are probably writers who are much more visual than I am and some who are less. I like to think of myself as a happy medium.

I have grown in my writing and I care about it now and I know how important it is to write stuff.

Novelists seem to fall into two distinct categories - those that plan and those that just see where it takes them. I am very much the former category.

Ultimately, it's about the quality of the writing whatever style you are writing.

I've just been writing stuff down as it comes to me. I haven't thought, 'Let me write some major opus here.'

I was so naive about writing, I went to the public library and checked out the only volume they had on the topic - an academic treatise about publishing from the WWII era.

I don't write to a genre.

My primary ambition is to be a fiction writer... Being a critic wasn't an aspiration of mine.

I'm an author who likes assignments, who needs suggestions, ideas I would never have thought of otherwise - then something happens inside my alien head. Other people have to decide whether or not I'm a good writer, but I do have the ability to write in different styles.

I'm often asked how I write books, but I don't think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was 'I tend to make it up as I go along.' I'm not sure that's brilliant advice.

You have to go where the good writing is.