Anthony Marra Quotes

When I am so intensely involved with writing my books, I don't like to reread them. I feel like that story is done.

When I create characters, I create a world to inhabit and they begin to feel very real for me. I don't belong in a psych ward, I don't think, but they become very real, like my own family, and then I have to say goodbye, close the door, and work on other things.

I'm always a bit disappointed when I've finished working on a book.

You have to have a somewhat cold heart to be a writer.

For me, once I've worked on something and it's finished, it's like an ex-boyfriend: you don't go back to them.

I need a distance to my characters when I write.

I don't pick up my work at all. If it's something that's still in progress and I have the chance to make some edits on the material or think about the order, little things like that, I'll keep those stories at hand and go through them. But once it exists as the book, it's locked away in a vault, and I kind of put it behind me.

I knew a book of mine was finished when I was in intensive care.

To complete a work is just like being present at the death of someone you love.

I'm publicizing the book that's done. I'm writing the book that's in the hopper, and I'm doing a little advance research on the book to come.

If I took my characters home with me, half of my life would be a misery, I think. No, I tend to compartmentalize work from my life. I'm not terribly method.

I don't keep any copy of my books around... they would embarass me. When I finish writing my books, I kick them in the belly, and have done with them.

Usually it takes me about nine to 12 months to write a book.

We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.

Usually, I would mistrust a book if it took that long to write. Usually, if it isn't done in two years, I suspect there's something wrong and throw it away.

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

Every time I finish a book, I say to an imaginary god that I do not believe in, 'Please let me live to write another one.'

Robert Mapplethorpe asked me to write our story the day before he died. I had never written a book of nonfiction, and so it took me almost two decades to write that book.

I'm remembering one book that I wrote, 'Fourth Grade Rats,' that took a month to write, but most of them, full-length novels, I would say about a year.

I was swimming in my swimming pool when 'The Secret Lovers' popped entire into my head. I got out, dried off, went upstairs, and finished the book in about 50 days.

The only difference between a good writer who publishes a book and a good writer who doesn't is that the writer who publishes actually finished her book.

My first novel, 'The Lions of Lucerne,' just poured out of me. It was an amazing feeling of accomplishment. My biggest fear and therefore my biggest obstacle to becoming an author had been, 'What if I spend all that time and the book is no good?'

Finishing books - and leaving the world you've created - is always a kind of emotionally wrenching experience. I usually cry.

I try not to identify too strongly with any of my characters. I like to stand back and see them objectively. I think this is why I often use boys instead of girls, just in case I get too close and lose the overall picture.

People generally don't recognize how long it takes to conceive, publish, and write a book.