Cormac McCarthy Quotes

Like everything, what compels one to put pen to paper is a great question.

Writing a novel isn't like building a brick wall. You don't figure out how to do it, and then it gets easier each time because you know what you're doing. With writing a novel, you have to figure it out each time. Each time you start over, you just have the language and the idea and the hope.

I'm not driven. I love writing. My imagination is always working. I write when I have time, and life allows me the time.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

I have never sought the reason why I write.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

I write all the time - I write poetry, I love to write.

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 love writing. It's one of my favorite jobs. Of the things I get to do, I love sitting in a room and coming up with ideas, and I love going home and pounding them out.

Sometimes writing has to be forced. In starting out, the shape and timbre and texture of what is to come is an uncertain chimera shimmering from behind a veil. You must not wait, loiter, dilly-dally. You must force your way painfully through.

I can't tell you any more than any other writer can tell you why they write, and I don't know what my influences are.

The writing part of my life never changes, because that's just when the inspiration comes.

Writing is never, ever easy but I wake up every morning grateful for the gift of being able to do this.

I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?'

I may attempt a novel. I think that no matter what you write, it requires being honest with oneself, and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life.

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

There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write.

The only real advice you can give anyone is to keep writing.

So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

I want to get within myself and write. I really, really want to write.

I enjoy writing. I enjoy that kind of process.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away inside us.

When I'm writing a novel, I'm usually just trying to write about things that are interesting to me.

Ever since I was twelve, I dreamed of being an author. I just never had the fortitude to see any of my stories through to completion. I would start a book, get a few chapters in, and grow bored or get distracted by something else.