Luis Alberto Urrea Quotes

Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again.

I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.

The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.

To become a novelist, the most crucial thing one must do is read, read and read again - gradually you begin to think like a writer. Ideas are not found - they are shaped.

I think writing a poem is like being a greyhound. Writing a novel is like being a mule. You go up one long row, then down another, and try not to look up too often to see how far you still have to go.

I'm not a fast, stream-of-consciousness lyricist at all - I know some guys who are, and if there is one skill I wish I had, it's that.

I'm not a writer. I know a lot of writers; I know a handful of really excellent, great ones, and I know what they're like. They are in love with language. They're obsessed with it. Even if their thoughts aren't more special than anybody else's, they have a way of putting them into words that makes them sensational.

I'm definitely a writer. I don't even know how to freestyle.

I write everything. It's my favorite part of what I do. And lyrics are my favorite thing.

I'm sure every author has their own process.

Sunday is a likely day to write a poem. Because poetry is a piece of language flying around: you'll find notebooks, something on your phone. It's about finding them and getting them off that crumpled piece of paper and onto my computer.

I love great writing.

It used to be that phrases and lines would come into my head, often many of them in a period of five days or a week, and maybe I didn't know what I was talking about, but the words had a kind of heaviness or deliciousness to them.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

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.

Call me the author.

I came up with new leads for game stories by being observant and clever, by using the many gifts of the English language to intrigue and hook a reader.

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way.

I write all the time - I write poetry, I love to write.

I write short stories. I write every day.

What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever.

Some writers would be kinder than others, I'm sure. Hopefully they might describe my techniques as a mixture of tried and tested formulas - if it aint broke don't fix it - and unexpected twists.

Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me.

Doing interesting things and then writing about them is the best way to become a good writer.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.