Markus Zusak Quotes

I'd been writing poems for many years, but most of them I didn't like. Then, when I was 23, I wrote one I did like, sent it to 'The Paris Review' - the highest publication I could think of - and they accepted it. No other moment in my literary life has quite come close to that.

My dream was to be known as a writer and to be able to produce at least one book that would be read by people. That dream came true with the publication of my first novel - and all the rest has been a sweet bonus.

I remember the first time I held my book, my first book in my hands. I cannot tell you how it moved me.

I was going to write a book one day and I actually did. To have it is a major accomplishment for me.

I love all of my books. They were labors of love; I was striving to create something well done, and I do feel I succeeded.

The best ideas are those that really affect me emotionally - those are the ones you never forget. You think to yourself, 'I want to write that book', for years; those are the ideas that I love to work with, and 'The Bone Garden' was one of them.

Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.

'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' was surprisingly easy and fun to write because I was feeling such strong emotions.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the level of success I've had. I was just writing stories for my own sons.

The story wrote quickly. I called it 'Where You're From,' and I sent it out, as I had numerous other stories over the years. Except this time I got a letter back saying that it would be published. Someone out there had liked the story. I was thirty-one years old.

I write characters and stories that move me, and I write from the heart.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

I had always presumed that my first book would be published, but I never dreamt that I would write 15 bestsellers and have this wonderful life in America that I have entirely built for myself.

All I wanted to do was to follow my passion and tell a good story.

Frazzled and delirious, as I've just finished a new book of stories. I feel like Moses staggering down the mountainside with the tablets of stone.

My most successful books, the ones that I feel the strongest about, are the ones that started with a premise that for me was deeply emotional.

Suddenly, the idea of writing a book was like coming home. I didn't tell anyone except my wife, Clare. I just began.

It gives me a very keen satisfaction that, after listening to my blather all those years, former students are now seeing that I wrote a book, that I did have it in me.

What I described in 'Another Life' - about being on the hill and feeling the sort of dissolution that happened - is a frequent experience in a younger writer.

Sometime early in life, I developed the notion - one which I have never relinquished - that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do.

I've had so many experiences with film or musicals or books where I just walk away changed in some way. One of the things that makes me want to be a writer is to pour my heart into something and hope that I can affect someone in that same way.

Most things in life you can work for or buy. But I can't guarantee a goal... And when it comes, I can't give that feeling to anyone. Only I can feel it and know it. I want my children, my wife and people close to me to have that feeling. But I can never give them that.

I can't believe I actually wrote a book.

I'm probably the most proud of "Mrs. Potato Head," because I had that idea in my head for so long, and I tried writing that song one time and I just couldn't tell the story the way I wanted to, and I couldn't figure it out.

I think that, as a writer, while it's your job to construct stories, you have to navigate your way through them with your heart.