Terrence McNally Quotes

People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away.

Do not copy my style! The first rule of writing is write about what you know, not what you think you know. So, think about what you've done in your life and write about that.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

There are millions of people who think that romance isn't real writing. But the only person who can make you real, make your books real, is you.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

I prefer writing originals.

Back when I taught middle school and wrote adult mysteries, my students often asked me why I wasn't writing for kids. I never had a good answer for them. It took me a long time to realize they were right.

Ignore all advice about writing. Leave your blood on every page. Every page!

It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating one's own creativity - that's a much tougher matter.

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.

I don't want to wear my compositional tools on my sleeve.

Remember to write for yourself, not for a market and give yourself time to develop your own style, your own voice. It takes a lifetime. Enjoy it!

I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.

As far as writing, it's grown because I've really grown comfortable with who I am.

I think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.

There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write.

I write what I'm interested in.

I love to write.

I write from my imagination, not from what I've read in books or seen on TV or to make money. I wrote from an idea I was passionate about.

Admiration from my readers inspire me, and the only 'formula' I believe in towards making a good writer is: 'to thine own self be true!'

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself. I always failed. I would freeze up.

I'm addicted to creating and writing.

I always write about subjects which attract me because if I didn't, it would be awful, a failure.

When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.