Markus Zusak Quotes

The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.

I start my process hand written, and then I dump it in. It's like you're getting a second draft 'cause when I put it in the computer, I fix it and change stuff. That's my process. I picked that up from speaking to Neil Gaiman and Joe Hill. I was messing around with the idea of starting to write more, writing a book and doing things like this, and I reached out for advice. They were like, "Oh, we hand write, and then we dump it all in." I was like, "Great! There's no more blank pages."

The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.

I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and try to rewrite it.

I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.

I come out of journalism, and then book writing. There, it's just you and your editor and maybe a copy desk, looking over your editor's shoulder, and that's the story. It's right there. I can show it to you because it's on paper.

Maybe I'll just write books. I'd like to make another movie, but I don't want to go back and [do] what they want you to do, to make it for a million dollars. I did that. I don't need a lot, but I need what I used to get, and they don't give you that anymore.

No two books come out the same way. Some I write by the seat of my pants; others are planned in minute detail.

So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the book.

I can't stand it when people say, "If you're writing a novel, you should read this and that." Because it's like giving someone another person's prescription. How do you know that's what they need?

A book unwritten is a delightful universe of infinite possibilities. Set down one word, however, and it immediately becomes earthbound. Set down one sentence and it’s halfway to being just like every other bloody book that’s ever been written.

Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage. I've always written in the long format, five, eight, 10-minute pieces rather than one-liners, so since writing books, the process hasn't changed much. A piece in my live routine can end up as part of one of my HBO specials, and it can also end up in one of the books.

[Ernest ]Hemingway always said, "Write about what you know." I think you can do that, and if you want to write about what you don't know, you can. It just takes a lot more work.

But I begin to think the chief difficulty in writing a book must be to keep out what does not belong to it.

There's that lovely thing for the first month or two of writing a new book: OK, I don't know what that character's going to do, but we'll find out later. After about three or four months you come to that bit where you've got to put some plot in before it's too late, and you have to go back and start inserting plot, and, ooh, I've left out the literature, OK, lets put some in.

As much fun as it is to read a book, writing a book is one level deeper than that.

I think the book you always like best is the one you're about to write.

A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain kind of music that I start hearing. It's the music of the language, but it's also the music of the story. I have to live with that music for a while before I can put any words on the page. I think that's because I have to get my body as much as my mind accustomed to the music of writing that particular book. It really is a mysterious feeling.

Writing is finally a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To leap. To fly. To fail.

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.

I don't have a publisher yet, so I'm not in the process of that next stage and I don't know what that's going to look like. So I feel like I finished stage one [with my book].

Writing a book isn’t an easy process nor is it always enjoyable, but it is one of life’s most satisfying achievements.

Objectifying your own novel while writing it never really helps. Instead, I guess while you're writing you need to think: This is the novel I want to write. And when you're done you need to think: This is what the novel I wanted to write feels like and reads like and looks like. Other people might call it sweeping or small, but it's the book you chose.

When I'm writing a book, I draw from my immediate experience, and my books are therefore almost a snapshot of where I am at that moment in my life.

I caution writers all the time to slow down and pay more attention to the work in front of them than to the end result. I don't think you write one book and get anywhere. I think you write five books and then maybe you are finally on the right path.