Asa Larsson Quotes

My first attempt at writing a novel was horrible. I had to throw it away. But I stuck with the idea, which is what became 'The Invisible Circus.'

For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard.

A novel is a big thing. It's difficult to hold the whole story in your mind, especially when you've finished a first draft and are still giddy from the flow of creative juices.

Writing a novel is an intense and lonely business, but you have the reward at the end of a very direct dialogue between you and the reader.

Writing a novel is not at all like riding a bike. Writing a novel is like having to redesign a bike, based on laws of physics that you don't understand, in a new universe. So having written one novel does nothing for you when you have to write the second one.

I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.

The hardest single thing you do is get the bloody screenplay right.

To make it interesting and worth doing, writing a novel has to be a leap into the unknown. I have to be unsure if I can write it; otherwise, I won't want to.

After 20 years of writing academic prose and lectures, it seems very familiar and straightforward to me. Writing a novel for the first time, I was reminded of just how difficult it is to figure out how to get this stuff done when you don't really know what you're doing.

I abandoned my second novel completely. Writing 'Kavalier & Clay,' I had several moments of utter collapse. Same with 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union.'

There's nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, 'Well, okay, I'm going to do something of high artistic worth.'

With a novel, there is no hurrying it. You're constantly walking into the unknown.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

I was an avid reader, but never thought seriously about writing a novel until I was in my thirties. I took no formal fiction-writing courses and never thought about these categories when I wrote my first novel.

Writing's still the most difficult job I've ever had - but it's worth it.

I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.

Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.

No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written.

When you write a novel, you never have to be in the service of the reader. My only concern with my books is that the world that's created be as logical and whole as possible.

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

There are people who say they want to write novels. They think, 'I'll learn my craft on the romance novel.' If you don't love the genre, it's going to show, and it's not going to be a good book.

A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

I can't write a book like 'Lamb' or 'Fool' every year. It just takes too much research and craft.