Karin Slaughter Quotes

I wish I could spend six years writing one novel.

I don't think there was a time I ever thought of myself as anything but a writer. I thought I was going to be the next Toni Morrison.

Every 'Observer' writer wants to be a novelist.

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.

Of course I planned to write the Great American Novel; that lasted about a week, at which point I decided I had nothing to say that could possibly qualify. So I wrote a romance instead.

Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.

Now I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am.

What I wanted in life always was to write something as good as 'Pinocchio.' I wanted to write. I wanted to evolve. I wanted to grow.

If I really considered myself a writer, I wouldn't be writing screenplays. I'd be writing novels.

I am never really surprised at the way my books take shape. They are just not as perfect as I'd like them to be.

The first story I wrote was called 'Days,' and I have very little affection for it.

At the outset, my notion of being a writer was that you would have moments of inspiration and moments of frustration, when you'd crumple up your pages and toss them away. On one side, the dustbin would fill up, and on the other side, pages would rise into a novel.

I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.

I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.

Writing was something I always as a kid thought would be fabulous and glamorous to be a writer.

Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death.

When you tell them you're a writer, they say, 'What have you written?' And then you've got to tell them what you've done. I don't ask a plumber what he does. Then I have to explain what I've done, and I haven't really, you know. I've just told some stories.

I don't know any writer for whom it comes easily. Maybe John Updike - a story would just seem to come to him whole, you know, out of a personal experience. But the rest of us, I think, are not so lucky, and I had to work hard, yeah.

I have been aspiring to write some sort of literature for a long time.

I had tried writing novels for many years, and they always escaped me. For a long time, I thought, 'It's just not in me to write a novel. It's not something I'm able to do.' It seemed like everything I wrote naturally ended at the bottom of page three. A picture book, three pages; an essay, three pages.

I've always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I learned to read, I've wanted to share stories with others the way my favorite writers shared their stories with me.

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.

And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care.

I've always been a writer.