Manika Quotes

I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.

How lucky am I? Quite often I speak at book festivals, and people ask me how I got published. There's people who have been working on a book for as long as ten years, and I feel like such a cow.

I really absolutely loved writing my first book.

When I write books, I've learned not to have any expectations that I'm going to change the world.

I can't believe I actually wrote a book.

Writing a book is a long and difficult process for me. I'm a slow writer, so I spend the year with Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in my head. I was thinking about this the other day. I wrote the first book in 1987. Literally every day since that time, Elvis and Joe have been in my head. They're always there. I started these guys because I like them.

The story grew, got way bigger than the contest rules called for, and next thing I knew I had a book.

I was definitely meant to be a young adult author, and I love it - I'm here to stay!

If I ever wrote a book, people would never believe it.

Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

When I was 19 years old, I wrote my first book. I took a computer science class, and the book was garbage. I thought I could write a better one, so I did.

I feel like I've got a novel in me somewhere, but that's something... I was just talking to a buddy of mine about it, who's a writer as well, and he's nearly done with his first novel, and it's taken him 11, 12 years to do it. And I can totally understand; it's a long process.

I'm remembering one book that I wrote, 'Fourth Grade Rats,' that took a month to write, but most of them, full-length novels, I would say about a year.

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

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 had this story that had been banging around in my head and I thought, 'I'll just see if there's anything there.' So I wrote a few chapters of the book that became 'Year of Wonders,' and lucky for me it found its readers.

I'd never have written the big books in London.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

The No. 1 thing is to write the book that you love and then hope that it finds an audience with the same taste as you. I think I've done that, and that's lucky.

Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.

It was my great problem to solve: how to write a book, you know. And after you write one, you have to write another to prove to yourself you can do it again.

I think 'Hollow City' only took a year and a half to write... but it felt like two and a half!

I've had great writing teachers and mentors and great success with my first book.

I never thought I would grow up writing a book.