John Darnielle Quotes

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

It's hard to read good fiction when I am writing, because if it is really good I catch myself sort of inadvertently imitating a great writer.

I know that the writers I read and admire all have an influence on my work, but trying to determine to what degree any particular piece of input changes the way I think about writing seems counterproductive.

The books I read, if they intrude on my writing, do so as weather will pass through and touch a landscape - affecting it, yes, but only now and then leaving a permanent mark.

Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can.

I don't really like to just sit down at a computer and write, because that tends to be a little forced.

Sloane Crosley and David Sedaris are two of my favorite writers; they're the kind of writers who make you feel like, 'I can do this. I want to do this.'

I write in a rush of memory.

I was able to work out all sorts of attitudes to style and event and character, all of which affected the way I came to think about my own writing. I believe that all good writers are original.

If you want to be a writer, don't worry so much about writing. Read as much as you can. Read as many different writers as you can. Soak up the styles.

Whatever I'm reading at the moment seems to influence whatever I'm writing.

All writers are mimics, and I'm not interested in picking up somebody else's style or voice.

I write 'by the seat of my pants.' I love to do research. I am inspired by contemporary writers and contemporary events. I live in the real world.

I've just been writing stuff down as it comes to me. I haven't thought, 'Let me write some major opus here.'

The things I write are combinations of all of the people that have been influences to me.

Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

People such as Hunter S. Thompson and the Beats were a huge influence on me, not just in what they were saying, but how they said it.

I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer.

I thought Cheever was magnificent and that if I could write like him that would be the best I could do. And then I realized that what I really wanted to write had nothing to do with what he was doing.

People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away.

I believe that, like most writers, my personality comes through in the fiction. So in that respect my writing can't be like any other author's really.

My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.

Although psychoanalysis has influenced me personally, it has had curiously little influence on my writing. This may be because writers learn from other writers, not from theories.

I always wanted to be a writer. In the beginning, I thought I had to rewrite 'Gone with the Wind,' but eventually, I found my way and realized that wasn't me.