David Baldacci Quotes

I'm ever curious about the world. I'm driven to go out and find new things to write about. Having a vivid imagination is also a plus.

As long as there are things to wonder about, there are stories to be written about them. That makes me happy, because writing about things seems to be my thing.

I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.

Nothing much interested me other than playing with language and telling stories and doing something with the wonders of the world around me.

I write about all manner of things: a guy fighting aliens in the New York State Library, Antarctica, Inca civilization in Peru, the Great Pyramid at Giza, and people often ask me, where do I get these ideas from? They come from reading widely, watching a lot of documentaries, and increasingly, as I was able to, travelling around the world.

When writing 'Give and Take' and 'Originals,' the predominant emotion for me was curiosity.

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.

It’s not just the adage ‘write what you know,’ it’s about gathering up all of the knowledge and experience you’ve collected up to now to help you dive into the things you don’t know.

Call it vanity, call it arrogant presumption, call it what you wish, but I would grope for the nearest open grave if I had no newspaper to work for, no need to search for and sometimes find the winged word that just fits, no keen wonder over what each unfolding day may bring.

I write to satisfy the story or poem or piece of fascinating research that speaks to me. To rub a sore, to resonate with joy, to answer a question no one else has satisfactorily answered for me.

I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

Do me a favor - right now, today, start a list of all your crazy obsessions, the things that get your heart pumping, that wake you up in the middle of the night. Put it above your desk and use it to guide you, to jumpstart your writing each and every day.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

Fuel your kids' dreams. Sometimes, that means letting them stay up past their bedtimes.

I write what I don't know. It's way more interesting.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

I write and I read, and I write and read my way into and out of ideas and life. And that's what we do. That's what storytellers do.

I think that we all absolutely have curiosity. It brings about knowledge. It's energizing. It's spiritually empowering. It makes us more interesting as people.

I look for stories everywhere.

Each book, for me, has been an adventure, a period of time dedicated to study, to document certain facts, to traveling, and also to fantasize and to invent.

The best memories on tour are always of kids who tell me they are going to run back to their classrooms and start writing!

Writing will be like a journey, every word a footstep that takes me further into undiscovered land.

Reading makes me want to write my own books, and just trying to understand what I see in the world around me makes me want to figure things out.

Dig into life with wild roving abandon, opening your mind to the delicious possibilities that perplex the mind, entice the heart, and excite the spirit.