Frank McCourt Quotes

I wanted to write it long before I wrote Every Night, Josephine! I'd been thinking about it a long time.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

It's a lot to expect of yourself, to write a novel in a year. Anyway, you don't write a novel, you write a scene, and then another scene.

It's that drama that drives authors, you know.

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.

I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.

You write, hoping to write a good book; that's it.

I don't have goals when writing books, apart from getting to the end. I have rather vague ideas about how I want things to feel, I'm big on ambience. I have a title, a beginning and a probable ending and go from there.

As a writer, you look for inspiration wherever you can get it.

In a way, I started 'Goon Squad' not even realizing I was writing a book. I thought I was just writing a few stories to stall before starting this other book that I wanted to write - or thought I wanted to write: I still haven't written it.

I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.

When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.

Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.

The best ideas are those that really affect me emotionally - those are the ones you never forget. You think to yourself, 'I want to write that book', for years; those are the ideas that I love to work with, and 'The Bone Garden' was one of them.

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.

What's funny about that is when I was writing Twilight just for myself and not thinking of it as a book, I was not thinking about publishing, and yet at the same time I was casting it in my head. Because when I read books, I see them very visually.

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.

I decided to write a book primarily because people talked me into it.

I might be into writing... I'd like to try it someday. I always come up with some good ideas.