Jennifer Hale Quotes

I had to write about realistic circumstances. That's the way my brain works. And I think that gave me a sort of place in the field.

When I set out to write, I see it very visually. I almost feel like a reporter. I'm relating what I'm seeing and hearing, so it's kind of watching a play for me.

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.

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.

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.

When I write, it's like watching a movie in my head.

When I'm writing, I'm creating the story and its character with words. I'm thinking about what the pictures will be like, but I never begin to sketch. The pictures are all in my head.

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

People have asked me a lot, 'What comes first? The pictures or the story? The story or the picture?' It's hard to describe because often they seem to come at the same time. I'm seeing images while I'm thinking of the story.

I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.

My books come to me in images, and sometimes the image is at the beginning of the book, and sometimes it's simply a flash somewhere in the middle.

I write on a visual canvas, 'seeing' a scene in my thoughts before translating it into language, so I'm a visual junkie.

Writing, when it works, one needs to access whatever it is that creates dreams.

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

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

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

I feel like my brain is more geared towards a novel than it is to a movie.

Good writers are in the business of leaving signposts saying, Tour my world, see and feel it through my eyes; I am your guide.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.

I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.

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.

For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.

The character I created, 'Commissario Brunetti,' who appears in all my books, shares similar reading, artistic and musical tastes with me. Subconsciously, I knew that if I was to spend however long it would take to write this book with him, this man would have to be someone I'd like to have dinner with.

People sometimes ask who I would cast in my books and I never have any idea. I don't think I could ever write a book thinking of it as a movie the whole time. This would be like building a house and filling it with furniture just so you could have blueprints.