James Arthur Quotes

Man, that's the only kind of book I like – one that's so real you want to find out everything there is to know about the person who wrote it, like how tall he is and what kind of music he likes and whether or not he really went through all the stuff he was writing about.

I certainly think I'll end up writing about America in some form. I've taken plenty of notes. I like America very much.

Canadian writers don't live in gated mansions; you can just talk to them when you see them lining up at the Second Cup.

I've always tried to write about America. It's very worth a writer's effort.

That's the secret to anything we write. You have to bring your experience to it. Otherwise, how do you expect anyone else to connect to it?

I love Canada, and I dated someone who was Canadian a few years ago, and she brought me into a deeper understanding of the greatness of the culture.

I'm not a gifted storyteller, so I write what I know and hope that honesty resonates with other people's experiences.

I am fine with my books being categorized as African-American literature but I hope they are also considered Haitian-American literature and American literature. All of these things are part of who I am and what I write.

When I write a story, I just wanna tell you what's in my head. It can come from real life and then turn into fantasy, stuff just rhyming. And write about what you know. I just like to tell stories that have not been told or [told] from my perspective.

I've lived in America for many years. I mean, I love being a Canadian, but I truly identify with America. I love America so much.

To me it's very obvious there are huge cultural differences between Americans and Canadians. But a lot of what we are is American.

I always wanted to write a book about LA, a big ambitious book. Nobody had ever really done it with LA- treating the city seriously as a major economic and cultural power, as the embodiment of 21st century America.

Well, it's my age group, anywhere from, I'd say 30 to 70. The biggest comment I get about the book is how honest it is and that people can relate to my circumstances going across the line. Anybody could learn and deal with this book from reading it.

You can't write if you can't relate.

No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.

I would hope that people, no matter what age, would find something to identify with in my books, pick one up and experience a personal sense of discovery. That's great. But for them, not for me.

I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was.

I still retain a bit of a child's focus on things, so we [with my sister] figure if we're going to write books, our best shot is to write children's books, because we relate pretty readily on that level.

Multicultural is not a description of a category of American writing-it is a definition of all American writing.

In fact, I think every book I've written has been inspired by a real event.

But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn't a bad idea. IfI write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don't have to be very smart.

Canada is a country where the serious writers are hockey fans and readers of comic books. They don't play chess.

If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.

Experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.