Amy Bloom Quotes

To do the writing, I have to have time to do research.

I write about what I know.

Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff.

You can only really write about what you know about.

I think anyone can write about anything that they have knowledge of and exposure to.

If you don't write about what you know, you're like a barrister and have to do a frightful amount of research for each case.

Don't write about that which you don't know.

As a journalist for 35 years, and now author for 20, I've learned that there's always more.

You learn to write by reading, and my experiences and tastes as a reader are pretty wide.

I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.

Me, I'm an encyclopedia. I'm not a very smart guy, but I'm an encyclopedia. You can ask me about anything you want. Probably I have the book; probably I have a first edition.

What I like most: Reading well-written sources that take me to another world for hours at a time - and being able to call that 'work!' Also, of course, finding a gem of information that is either exactly what I was looking for, or else fits perfectly into the story in some way.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

Experience alone can give a final answer. The knowledge gained in a few years by a commission of the kind suggested would be worth more than volumes of mere assertions and contradictions.

Obviously, a writer can't know everything about what she writes. It's impossible.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

I've been around a while. I kinda know these things.

The common wisdom is that only about 1 percent of a novelist's research ends up in his or her book. In my experience, it's even less - closer to a tenth of a percent.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

I like learning things, and I like that writing comics is an excuse to look into new stuff and research and learn new things and hopefully put them in books.

If you're going to write, you're going to have to force yourself to really study the world.

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

I'm a great believer in the novelist being 'on the scene,' reporting, traveling, meeting all sorts of people.

One can only improvise what one knows.

Because there is no better tool for writing than experience. It has very little to do with grammar and everything to do with knowing.