Philip Levine Quotes

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

I discovered that writing was very nice indeed when I was very young, and I never changed. I don't think my style has changed very much at all - though I hope what I say is a bit more interesting. It's about getting to know a character and loving them, I think.

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

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.

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.

I can't tell you any more than any other writer can tell you why they write, and I don't know what my influences are.

Every writer has to find their own way into writing.

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.

There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.

My idea of writing is of unflinching and continual effort, somehow trying to find the right words until you reach a point where you can make no further progress and you either have something or you don't.

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.

Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

Many fiction writers write for the critics or for themselves; they forget the common reader. I never do. I don't think journalism clashes with my fiction; on the contrary, it helps enormously.

I still write the same way and have the same perspective.

I'm of the ilk of writers that feels you have to be open to the inspiration.

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

You write, hoping to write a good book; that's it.

I always wrote. I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the '80s developing my craft as a writer.

I'm not one of those authors who claims to hear voices in my head or 'let the characters speak through me,' whatever that might mean.

There is no motivation higher than being a good writer.

Ultimately, you've got to have something to say, so a writer should continue learning things throughout life. But I don't think education makes one a writer.

In a way, I started 'Goon Squad' not even realizing I was writing a book. I thought I was just writing a few stories to stall before starting this other book that I wanted to write - or thought I wanted to write: I still haven't written it.