Dan Simmons Quotes

In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.

As soon as you sit down to write about something you are pressing your nose deeper into the sewer of facts.

One can become drab, dull, and boring doing the same thing every day. Writing helps break the monotony.

Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.

If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.

As for me, this is my story: I worked and was tortured. You know what it means to compose? No, thank God, you do not! I believe you have never written to order, by the yard, and have never experienced that hellish torture.

You really don't understand the first thing about writing...for one thing, early in the morning is the worst possible time. the brain is like a wet sponge at that hour. And for another, real writing is a question of staring into space and waiting for the right ideas.

When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a 'good writer.' Now I more or less take my writing abilities for granted, although this doesn't mean I always write well.

That buy is totally cracked out," Vic said one day, as we walked past Balthazar in the great hall. I don't think he's on alything." I didn't mean, for real. If he was cracked out for real, he'd probably be having more fun, right?" Vic shrugged. "Balty looks like he's not having any fun. He looks like he never had any. Like he wouldn't know fun if it started dancing around yelling 'I'm fun' in his face.

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about...)

As soon as I saw myself beginning to be way too comfortable on a film set or TV set, and not stimulated by it the way that I had been that had brought me to want to be there professionally and creatively, was the moment that I started getting really, really sad. I decided, "Okay, I just want to actually be here, how can I make this be interesting for me?"

Poetry is creative expression; Prose is constructive expression... by creative I mean original. In Poetry the words are born or reborn in the act of thinking... There is no time interval between the words and the thought when a real poet writes, both of them happen together, and both the thought and the word are Poetry.

The danger in writing about a world you don't know very well is that you can get lost in it, and sometimes I'll end up with a hundred pages I don't know what to do with.

Not all women write the same. But I don't understand why the model is that you're supposed to write like a man, and that means you're a real writer.

For me, every book is a journey - questioning a really difficult topic that most people don't want to talk about, much less write about. And that's what I need; that works for me as a writer.

When you go on tour and see everyone, you're like, "Oh my god. This is actually real life." That inspires me to write more songs.

The real question is what to live for. And I can't answer it. Except another one of your records. And another chance for me to write. Art for art's sake, corny as that sounds.

Real quality means making sure that people are proud of the code they write, that they're involved and taking it personally.

No one begs you to be a poet or write a 1000-page poem. You have to be fueled by a drive, a conviction - a need, a necessity, a vision that is so pressing that it has no other outlet but through you. That doesn't mean that you are unconscious or in trance, but there can be moments like that.

I don't want to tell people what to think. I'm the least qualified person in the world for that. If I'd go around pretending to be the expert on everything, I'd become Dan Brown, and I don't understand that. We all do our research if we're good writers, and we all work hard to get it right, but that doesn't mean we're experts in the field. The best we can do is challenge people to learn the facts themselves.

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. Sometimes you run over a drunk who's lain down and fallen asleep on the warm pavement. I mean, do you keep going, or what?

As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.

There is very little that is accidental in my work. I believe in serendipity for developments of plot, but the actual writing is arrived at by very hard work. The joy of writing doesn't mean that you don't get the backaches and headaches and the days when it's not coming.

Most of my books are about contemporary subjects, and the world changes so fast that I'm lucky when events haven't overtaken the book I'm writing at the moment.