Anna Todd Quotes

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

I don't know if I want to be a writer.

Until a book starts forming in your head, you always wonder, 'Am I going to be able to do this again?'

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.

I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

Even though I don't write about things that come from my life because I'm lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that's really what being a writer is, probably.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

I loved writing fiction. I mean, once I found the character, or the characters, and knew who they were and knew their back-stories, it really - I mean, I went into my studio every day, thinking, 'What's gonna happen to Billy today?'

In my brief writing life, it means I am still lucky that I have at least one more novel to complete. I do not expect that a story will arrive just because it is time to write another novel. It doesn't happen that way.

I'm remembering one book that I wrote, 'Fourth Grade Rats,' that took a month to write, but most of them, full-length novels, I would say about a year.

I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.

It's easier to come up with new stories than it is to finish the ones you already have. I think every author would feel that way.

When I'm writing, I try not to think things like, 'Gosh, I have to finish writing this book.' Books are very long and it's easy to get discouraged. Instead I think to myself, 'Wow, I have this great story idea, and today I'm going to write two pages of it. That's all - just two pages.'

I think when you first start out, you're writing books that are about your immediate place.

I don't think many of us launched ourselves into the world of writing books fully formed.

I don't usually think of my writing as a 'challenge' because I enjoy the process so much. I suppose that's what's helped me to avoid 'writer's block' all these years.

When I first started writing, I did mostly short fiction, and I'd work on a short story and get near to being done and have no idea what I'd work on next, and then I'd panic.

I didn't study writing. I didn't write anything substantial until I got to California.

I never have found out all I want to know about writing and realize I never will.

Like lots of people who say, 'I'm going to write a novel,' it's actually more comfortable to think I could write a novel than to discover that you can't.

I know it's working when I'm writing a book if I'm laughing or crying.