Padgett Powell Quotes

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Admiration from my readers inspire me, and the only 'formula' I believe in towards making a good writer is: 'to thine own self be true!'

I haven't read a book in a very, very long time because, when I'm writing, I don't like to see other people's work. I don't want to see something great and not be able to use it, and I don't want to have any subconscious influences.

Ultimately, you have to write what's coming at any given point in time. Fighting your instincts for practical reasons is a losing battle.

I prefer writing originals.

I try not to observe myself in the process of composing a poem because I don't want to come up with a formula, which I would then be unscrupulous in using.

As a writer, you have to first of all write what you want to. Listen to advice, by all means, but don't get bogged down in it.

John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.

I write just knowing that I enjoy writing. But if I have to write, it seems like nothing comes. But when I go there for my own pleasure, the Lord might just give me loads of stuff all at once.

I don't write on demand - I wait for inspiration to come.

I actually started writing publishable stuff the day I decided I'd actually like to write something I'd like to read, and stopped trying to think what does everyone actually want.

I'm constantly coming up with new strategies for getting to the mental place where writing is so joyous and playful that I almost can't help putting the words down.

Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

All my writer friends outline their books, and I find that hard. It doesn't feel inspired to me. I get bored with that, and really, I just want it to be fun.

The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is to write the book that you would want to read, and hope other people agree.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

I always write the pieces I want to write.

It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating one's own creativity - that's a much tougher matter.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

Remember to write for yourself, not for a market and give yourself time to develop your own style, your own voice. It takes a lifetime. Enjoy it!

You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.

I can't write every day. I have to skip a day in between. If I try to do it every day, nothing comes.

You have to write the story that's at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won't ring true.