Lynne Reid Banks Quotes

People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard.

I was taking my first uncertain steps towards writing for children when my own were young. Reading aloud to them taught me a great deal when I had a great deal to learn. It taught me elementary things about rhythm and pace, the necessary musicality of text.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

Writing is hard work. Generating stories that catch people's attention and holding it are very difficult.

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.

Writing is a struggle no matter what the genre.

I want to be a better writer. I want to learn and grow, to know how to tell stories in a different and more challenging way. I've learned it doesn't get easier each time. It actually gets harder.

I'm not standing above the audience trying to manipulate them as a puppet master or a trickster; I'm inside the story I'm writing and making and thinking about things very seriously and feeling very deeply at times, and trying to translate that into a narrative.

I'm always trying to make something that is impossible to film. Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody's head.

I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

I try not to repeat a story. I try not to repeat an emotion. I want it to be all sort of new for the viewers and to challenge myself as a writer, so there's always pressure. What else can you come up with?

I made a deliberate choice to write something people would enjoy, not knock people out with 'Boy, he can really put a clause together!'

I think I've written 40 books, and none of them have been heavy on action. I'm an introspective person.

Fiction, at its best, is a radical act of intimacy. It seeks to join, to merge, to know deeply; and, as with intimacy, there is a way in which it cannot be faked.

Part of the joy of writing for kids is that you have to have a real adventure story. You can get really involved in the fantastic in a way that perhaps you can't so much in adult fiction.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

The great pleasure for me in writing short stories is the fierce, elegant challenge.

I would like to write a book that wasn't so violent and weird, but I just don't think I can do that with my talent. I don't think it would come off.

Writing is a difficult thing.

A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

Sometimes I find it tiresome to write actions and describe the scene in a very intricate way so that every crew member understands where we are going - that I can find a little bit long and tiresome. But dialogue is just all my life. There's no way I could ever be challenged, not challenged, but I'm always so happy to write dialogue.

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.