Sarah Jones Quotes

All of my novels are seeded in real life events, and 'The Wreckage' is no different.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.

I think, as most people are, I'm fascinated with love, relationships, and my daily life so I'm very inclined to make films about those things.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.

Sometimes I'm asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project.

I love hearing other people's stories, and I freely admit I'm scavenging for material through their conversations, but really, at the same time, I'm living an ordinary life.

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.

I should tell you that many people think that authors just cut and paste from real life into books. It doesn't work quite that way.

I love sitting at my desk and facing a quiet day with a pen in my hand, and putting myself into a story. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I mean, to absent myself from real life and make up stories is strange, but I started doing this when I was ten years old. It was all I wanted to do.

Well it kind of is project to project because as a writer I think you always write to some degree about things that you know or things that happened - but my favourite filmmakers, my favourite movies of theirs tend to be the personal movies.

So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.

I think every character I've ever come up with has been based on someone or something I've known.

Something about your life always makes its way into your stories. That's just the nature of the beast.

I'd say most of my songs I write from personal experience. When I feel like I don't have any inspiration in my personal life, I think about others that are close to me and maybe what they're going through or even just people I've come across, acquaintances.

I don't know anyone who is a writer who isn't influenced by the relationships in their life.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I'm still awake. I can continue yesterday's dream today, something you can't normally do in everyday life.

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

Most of my characters are an amalgamation of people that I've met, my family, or myself. Being a writer, you can draw only from what you know. I am lucky to have really rich and interesting people in my family for, you know, interesting family nights and great characters.

Characters are not created on paper or laptop alone.

You'd only write what you know and what you know is what you do and the people you know. So you'd write about them or the people you have met casually. It's part of your life.

For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.

I think writers are observers and watchers. We always have our ears open and eyes open, so I might see something in everyday life that inspires me. And I think that's probably more than anything else. Everyday life is where I get my inspiration.