Jean M. Auel Quotes

I've found that writers who don't read really can't write.

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

I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.

I knew that if I was going to write a book, I was going to have to read one, too.

'The Secret Life of Bees' was my first novel, so I had no process. I was flying by the seat of my pants, as they say, trying to understand how I, as a novelist, would work with story.

There isn't any distinction between a reader and a writer - reading is so much a part of it.

Due to the sweeping time frame and the voices moving back and forth, the outline for 'The Invention of Wings' was the strangest one I've ever done. I created six large, separate outlines, one for each part of the book, and hung them around my study.

My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down.

I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.

Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.

When I read 'Room,' I absolutely loved it, and I thought I knew how to make it.

I always try to block out an hour or so a day to read. Being a writer is a job, and reading helps train my brain in the right direction.

I've done projects where I've read 25 books and did all kinds of journal and character work for hours.

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.

That's the novelist's job: to peel back the layers and look underneath.

The MFA program did one great thing for me: It taught me how to be a better reader and critic. Nothing I wrote during my time at Columbia remains - but learning how to really deconstruct a work of fiction - that, of course, is a permanent part of me now.

When I write, I try to capture one of those pivotal moments. If I succeed, I have shifted the reader's view of the world, just a little. The character is not the only one to experience change. That is my job, shifting perceptions, one story at a time. The trouble is, I don't like writing. But I love having written.

For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.

Even though 'Glee' is sometimes a hard road, I am very excited about writing a multi-year arc.

To combine telling an interesting story with brilliantly written characters is the most difficult thing to do.

I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.

I spent some time, six months or so, ruminating about the characters before I sat down to write 'Faith'.

Each book is a separate entity for me. When I'm writing it, I enter its world and inhabit its vocabulary. I forget, as it were, that I ever wrote anything else.

At least for me, writing a book is continual exposure to blind spots. There were things I wanted to be true and wanted to believe, but it always got more complicated in the fiction.

With a novel, there is no hurrying it. You're constantly walking into the unknown.