Samantha Harvey Quotes

I've always wanted to have a book published - it was a dream of mine, but the thought of actually writing a book made me feel really sick.

I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt.

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones - just as a young writer or poet might have to write hundreds of poems before writing his first significant one.

For a writer, published works are like fallen flowers, but the expected new work is like a calyx waiting to blossom.

Whether you're starving in a garret or living in a castle like J. K. Rowling, I had this image of the author as a flawless, composed individual, serene in the knowledge they were creating art.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

At first it was a bit daunting, but once I started to do it, the more I got into it, the more I started enjoying it and being able to say things lyrically that I would normally have to say musically.

When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

I wrote 'Ava Wrestles the Alligator' when I was 22 or 23. These people and that world have been evolving in me for a while. It's such a shift not to be in that world.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

After 'Where the Wild Things Are,' I guess I felt more confident as a writer.

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.

All that's left now is purely poetic work, putting more life into individual places, as I've made so sure of the fundamental mood and dimension of expression that it won't leave me groping around in uncertainty any more.

I think most writers will say that at the start of each book they think, 'I'm not sure I can do this.' But eventually, you reach a magical point where the story suddenly becomes real to you, and you become totally invested in it.

The story grew, got way bigger than the contest rules called for, and next thing I knew I had a book.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

I just finished a novel, and I'm back kind of noodling on the screenplays. Screenplays are tough. I am making music, I'm just not sure what kind of music it is or where it's going.

I just sit down and the page just comes out and I look at it and the elements that appear on that page have a lot to do with what's going on in my life.

I'm a writer, and the subject is less important than the act of writing itself.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.

I've wanted to write ever since I've gotten into comics. I wrote little things for myself when I was doing mini-comics and things, before becoming a professional. But I just figure at some point or another, I've got to make the leap. I just have to do it.