Christopher Darden Quotes

I don't want to walk in the middle. I want people to read what I write and feel strongly about it. If, at some point, whatever I am doing is failing to elicit a response, whether it's very positive or very negative, then I am going to stop doing it.

There's always going to be controversy when you write the way I write.

I like to think I've grown as a writer and taken some risks, but I still consider myself to be a literary writer.

Many fiction writers write for the critics or for themselves; they forget the common reader. I never do. I don't think journalism clashes with my fiction; on the contrary, it helps enormously.

If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead.

I don't really think in terms of making something that is going to be bought everywhere, because I don't read those things. My writing is a process in which I try my best to make good sentences and a sequence of events that is compelling and believable.

I've written a lot of really good books. Now we'll see if I can write any more good books. I mean there's a chance I won't, but I'm going to try.

I think all good writing is a struggle. To write as well as you feel you can has to be a struggle, almost by definition, because you could always improve.

I try not to repeat a story. I try not to repeat an emotion. I want it to be all sort of new for the viewers and to challenge myself as a writer, so there's always pressure. What else can you come up with?

I made a deliberate choice to write something people would enjoy, not knock people out with 'Boy, he can really put a clause together!'

As thrilling as it was, speechwriting is ultimately frustrating for someone who wants to be a writer.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

Once I had all the facts in, I found I didn't have the immoral courage to pull the caper. So I wrote it as a story. As a teenager, I didn't have any skills for writing as such, so it came out in 1500 words.

I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing.

If I ever wrote a book, people would never believe it.

Writing is hard work, but a lot of fun, too. It allows me to live out some of my fantasies.

I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way.

You think you have some stable talent that will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be getting across to the audience once, you can't imagine that moment when it suddenly will. Gradually, gradually you gain that confidence.

Raymond Chandler managed to write about L.A. his whole career. Should I keep going writing about New York? Is that what I should be doing? Songwriting doesn't work that way.

I thought I could write. So it was my intention to start off as a writer. But I wasn't really great at delivering the word at the end of the day.

Writing has taught me a lot - though far from everything - about writing, so as time has passed, it has become more pleasurable if not easier. I've done other things in life, but writing is by a factor of 10 the most difficult among them. And, of course, you never achieve what you set out to achieve, so you must keep on trying to do better.

What one's goal should be is just to become a better writer and to tell different kinds of stories.

I wanted to write.

Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.