Richard Matheson Quotes

The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.

I like it when I can hear directly from the writer: what they're seeing, what they're envisioning, and what their intention is.

There are probably writers who are much more visual than I am and some who are less. I like to think of myself as a happy medium.

If you are a good writer - and I think I am - you are able to handle any kind of group and imagine their lives.

I'm not one of those authors who claims to hear voices in my head or 'let the characters speak through me,' whatever that might mean.

In the most self-protective of ways, I don't think about the reader when I'm writing - I just think about the story.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

I'm constantly creating and writing.

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

I don't read books on how to write screenplays just because I'm stubborn. So it's all sort of made up.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

You become a great writer by writing.

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've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.

Writing is really hard, and it's really a skill.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.

I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.

I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience.

The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.

I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

I think that if you have a knack for storytelling, and you work really hard at it, you'll have a chance to tap into something deep. But the fact remains that good sentences are hard won. Any writer worth a lick knows constructing a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter is hard work.

I'm a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don't agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

When I am writing a story it feels as real as the life I am experiencing off the page. It's an emotional illusion, I guess.

So many stories, and to choose which ones to tell and how to tell them. The words, they will tap me on the shoulder and they will speak to me: 'Tell me! Tell me!' The stories choose me.