Howard Jacobson Quotes

I like to think I grow as a writer from every new experience.

I started off doing fiction in 1993. It didn't occur to me to do nonfiction because it wasn't a thing yet. So I was bumbling around, writing short stories, and then I took a nonfiction workshop, and I realized that this was what I was supposed to do.

I don't think much of anything I wrote before the age of 30.

A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time.

I believe that every writer evolves with every successive novel. I view myself as work-in-progress.

My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote.

You write a book, it's out for however many years, and with the passing of time, you're not the same person. I'm not the same person I was when I wrote those books; I'm not even the same person I was when I started writing 'Beg.' I had many shifts spiritually, and one of them was in the use of language.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.

I'm still learning my craft, and I've been writing since I was nine.

'Sag Harbor' was a very different book for me. It changed the way I thought about books that I wanted to do.

But I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books I have to start a new direction.

Were there stories I wrote along the way that were terrible clinkers? God, yes. But they were all a product of their time, and I did the best I could.

I'm glad I wrote them when I did because I think if I were to write my first novel now, it would be a different book, and it may not be the book that everybody wants to read. But if I were given a red pen now, and I went back... I'd take that thing apart.

My experience is, the writer I was when I began was only a fraction of what I feel capable of doing now. Don't stand on that threshold saying, 'I'm uncertain about my talent.' You can grow that part of yourself.

I don't want to compare myself to Picasso, but he had four or five periods in his life. Any good artist grows and changes and matures.

Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it. I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.

I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at a piece of nonfiction, a personal memoir of youth, but over the next several weeks, without intending it, the work began evolving into what has become 'Tomcat in Love.'

I wrote 'Ava Wrestles the Alligator' when I was 22 or 23. These people and that world have been evolving in me for a while. It's such a shift not to be in that world.

My first book was poetry, but I didn't write it first. I wrote it third. So my first two books were prose.

I am capable of much more. I guess every artist feels that way. If you are satisfied, you begin to stagnate. I want to grow as an actress every day. There are so many things you can learn, and you can improve upon your skills and abilities every day.

My personal writing philosophy is to try and write better every day.

I've written a lot of books now; I've been published for over 30 years. I hope with every book I learn something new, and with every new novel I try to improve the process of writing.

What I wanted in life always was to write something as good as 'Pinocchio.' I wanted to write. I wanted to evolve. I wanted to grow.

I guess you could say I've been writing all my life.

I think that it's the job of the artist to be in transition and constantly learn more.