Howard Gordon Quotes

I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.

My dream was, and always had been, to write a book. To be a writer.

My new novel 'Red Hook Road' began many years ago as a short article in the newspaper.

If I truly had the courage of my convictions, I would be a full-blown comic novelist.

The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling.

I'm a novelist at heart. How's that? And that's how I make my living, is I write novels.

The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length.

The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel.

Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.

Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.

What had happened was this. When still young, I had gotten the idea from somewhere that I might be able to write... Maybe the deadly notion came from liking to read so much. Maybe I was in love with the image of being a writer. Whatever. It had been a really bad idea. Because I couldn't write, at least not by the bluntly and frequently expressed standards of anyone in a position to offer any encouragement and feedback.

You can't write if you don't read.

I like writing historical fiction.

Books, the children of the brain.

Thanks to the comic book publishers. Batman and Captain Marvel were responsible for my learning to read at least a year before I showed up at school. They got me interested in writing. Started my first novel at about eight. The title: 'The Canals of Mars.'

I saw novelists as being admirable people and I thought... I thought... maybe, one day, I could be one of them.

I went to university in the north of England at University of Birmingham to do an English literature degree, and I knew I could do extracurricular stuff with theater and drama. I started a theater company, called Article 19, and I did it with a bunch of friends. I wrote and directed plays. I had a radio show.

I wanted to become a writer. I enjoyed reading as a child.

I've known several spies who have wanted to become novelists. And novelists who became spies, of course.

As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.

I hope to continue writing. I hope to continue teaching.

When I was in advertising, I did a great deal of work on television commercials. A co-worker and I wrote a screenplay, which led to a few more screenplays, and some were optioned by production companies. I was advised to move to California but didn't want to make the move. I decided to use another form of storytelling, so I wrote a novel.

I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday.

To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.

I wrote my first novel when my daughter was about six months old.