Markus Zusak Quotes

And so I write the way I myself would like the book to be – if I were a child. I write for the child within me.

Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

My best days do seem like a distillation of all that was best about school. Write a story! Paint a picture! Write a poem! Make a print!

Blank paper has always inspired me.

I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They're drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they're not tortured about it.

To write regular verses destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities, but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and totally unexpected thoughts.

I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.

Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.

I swim in a sea of words. They flow around me and through me and, by a process that is not fully clear to me, some delicate hidden membrane draws forth the stuff that is the necessary condition of my life.

I wrote my first song when I was six or seven, a silly little song. But I used to write poems in high school - not songs.

When you're in elementary school, you get these amazing assignments, like to come up with your own animal, come up with your own city, come up with your own planet, what do the people look like; you're very much encouraged to be as imaginative as possible.

When I was 14 years old, I was crazy about Dr. Seuss. I loved the words he made up, and I just thought, 'Well, if he can make up words, then I can make up words.'

Artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons.

I love making up titles.

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.

When I sit down to write, I consider myself an artist.

I decided to become an author when my grandmother taught me to write, when I was six. I can still recall the sensation of being able to turn words into stories. It was a miracle.

I'm not like a professional writer with professional skills. Songs kind of come into my head the same way they did when I was a kid. I say I'm an overgrown kindergarten kid. I work on songs.

Writing for children may have kept me young at heart.

I think most of the work of songwriting is thinking of great phrases - I'm addicted, always on the hunt for a really great phrase.

A writer is an artist. They're creating things out of thin air.

You can only write your own vision.

Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it.

To write more from memory and to be more creative - I think - because I am still writing about Los Angeles but I can't walk out my door and immediately drive to places I am writing about. So I think it has been a very good change for me after 11 books to start writing this way.