Christina Baker Kline Quotes

I'm for anything that lets writers stretch, in or out of their series.

So okay - there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.

I've never been that person who thought that because I've written one novel, I should write another and another. It's only when there was another novel to write that I was going to write another.

I don't really premeditate what I write my songs about; you know, they just kind of happen, and I can't start writing songs to please a certain group of people or propagate a certain message all the time. That's just not how my songwriting works - it just sort of comes out, and the songs are what they are.

A scrupulous man will never produce a great novel.

When no one knows you, and you're just trying to break into stuff, it's so good because you can write whatever you want and just say it; it's just between you and the audience. There's no process or worrying about anyone else interfering with what you're doing.

I try to forget about the expectation that's out there and the audience listening for the next thing so that I'm not trying to please them. I've spent a huge amount of time not communicating with those folks and denying that they exist.

I believe that, in an ideal world, writers would feel free to write what matters to them without having to consider success, failure, the market, etc.

I never try to pander to an audience, and I'm really not concerned with my image. I'm far more interested in stretching my abilities as an actor.

That freedom of writing you don't get in other formats, I'd rather leave it to someone else to deal with the headache of drafting my book into a screenplay.

Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.

I think writing a solo play was the most liberating thing I ever did.

When I wrote my novel, 'The Ministry of Special Cases,' I couldn't even brush my teeth. I had to write in isolation from everything else. I thought a play would take away from my fiction, but the more projects I work on, the more time I have.

I think writing gives me creative freedom.

I'm always telling myself as I write that I'm not really writing a novel; I'm just going to fool around with a character or an idea.

The best way to write a novel is to do it behind your own back.

I closed my own jazz bar so I could be a man who can write novels as I like. I was pleased about that. This pleasure was connected to the pleasure of writing.

I always figure there are novels and short stories, and in those, I'm God. No one tells me what to do. I don't have to lose a page, or cut anything, it's just mine. Then there are other things where you're up against realities.

I am of the firm opinion that no one should tell writers what to do, or what to write, or how to write.

I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.

I'm not proselytizing my method. I don't believe that one writer should tell other writers how to write.

From the beginning [of the Lincoln in the Bardo], I actually had it in mind not to write a novel. I'd kind of gotten past that point where I felt bad for never having written a novel, even to where I felt really good about it, like I was a real purist.

I've always been the audience that I wanted to reach, so I write for myself.

In the end I write the novels I need to write when I need to write them.

The beauty of my work is that my sets cost nothing. That's what I love about being a writer of novels.