Suzanne Collins Quotes

Just like all my novels, 'Illusion' is a good way to observe where Frank Peretti was in his life when he wrote it.

I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.

Everyone else thinks I'm a nonfiction writer. I think it's because my nonfiction is easier to find. But I write both in equal measure. I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself, and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

All writers are magpies, right? We're always stealing bits from different places and then weaving them into our little nest.

I've got an idea for a modern day faerie tale that I think would made a great short novel. But I just don't have the time to work on it right now. I'm way too busy with the 'Kingkiller Chronicles' and being a new dad.

When I am writing, I'm very much on the ground, on the same ground my characters are treading.

'Sag Harbor' was a very different book for me. It changed the way I thought about books that I wanted to do.

Every writer is going to end up drawing from their own experiences in one way or another.

The first story I can remember writing, that I truly set down on paper, was a Christmas story that I wrote when I was ten years old.

See, what I don't like listening to is when writers go, 'And then the person cries.' 'Or the person does this.' It's there, but it's not the Bible. I wait and see what happens to me on the day.

My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

My friend Markus Zusak wrote a story from the point of view of death, 'The Book Thief.' I thought that's a great idea, where your omniscient narrator is death. I'm glad he had that idea because I wouldn't have been able to work so well with it.

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 write what feels real. I write things that are informed both by my own experience and by actual history.

The stories that I tell, the topics that I choose to write about, usually are suggested by something that I've done before.

I can't help slightly falling in love with every character I write about. And I quite like writing about people who are vilified.

I think the moment you're writing about somebody who's not exactly you, then the challenge is all equal.

I'm not a teacher; I'm not a historian. I'm trying to create a world for my characters.

Of course you bank on your experience, but as a sounding board. It isn't that you write down what happens to you every day. You wouldn't be a writer if you did that.

When I set out to write, I see it very visually. I almost feel like a reporter. I'm relating what I'm seeing and hearing, so it's kind of watching a play for me.

What I like to write about is stuff I know. I don't think I could write a novel. I don't think I have it in me to come up with those kinds of characters.

When I'm writing a book, sentence by sentence, I'm not thinking theoretically. I'm just trying to work out the story from inside the characters I've got.

I spend so long writing each of my novels that by the time I'm done with one, I'm ready to discover a totally different world.

When I write a book, characters come to life for me somewhere at the back of my head. I strive to make them flesh and blood in an abstract way, in words.