Zoe Kazan Quotes

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

Everyone has early fiction fantasies, but it wasn't until my second child Betsy was born that I allowed the urge to write a novel bubble up.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

Nothing I had written before 'Mary Poppins' had anything to do with children, and I have always assumed, when I thought about it at all, that she had come out of the same wall of nothingness as the poetry, myth and legend that had absorbed me all my writing life.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.

When I read good stories, I want to write good stories too.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

I feel like reading really defined me as a writer because I lived my life outside of my own body for so much of my life and I loved it. I've always been a reader. I think living all those stories served me to naturally take that next step to creating.

I think the reason I'm a writer is because first, I was a reader. I loved to read. I read a lot of adventure stories and mystery books, and I have wonderful memories of my mom reading picture books aloud to me. I learned that words are powerful.

A story in your head isn't a story. It's just a daydream until you actually write it down. So write it down.

That's the biggest part of doing comics: You have to create stuff that makes you want to get out of bed every morning and get to work.

I try not to think too much about where my voice comes from. I'm channeling characters and emotion to come up with beautiful words that tell a story.

If I have a long period of time away from acting, I tend to write.

Something people say about acting is that acting is listening. But I think that writing is listening, too. That you really have to listen to what are they saying and what they're communicating to you. And so, a lot of it is just getting stuff down.

I think 'Dark Blue' came to me while I was doing a project in London. I read it, and the character immediately popped out at me.

I've always loved both writing and songwriting. The journey is fascinating to me.

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

The thing that inspires me most is reading and just observing the people around me. I think those are the two things that make me want to write.

I think I started writing because no one had ever told me you can write about the things you know in a musical. They don't have to come from some far off place.

The reason I start a novel is because there's something that excites me and I want to explore it.

I think at some level, it's just alchemy that we, as writers, can't explain when we write the characters. I don't set out to create the characters - they're not, to me, collections of quirks that I can put together. I discover the characters, instead. I usually go through a standard set of interview questions with the character in the beginning and ask the vital stuff: What's important to you? What do you love? Hate? Fear? .. and then I know where to start. But the characters just grow on their own, at a certain point. And start surprising me.

I started writing when I was 26, so I don't even know what year that was. I wrote a script for me to star in. A friend of mine, who was an actor that I would compete against a lot, had written a script and was taking all these meetings. He just kept pushing me and was like, "You got to do it. You're going to love it!" He's a very successful screenwriter now. His name is Michael Bacall and he wrote 21 Jump Street, Project X, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. So it was a few factors.

Usually when I start to work and to prepare the movie, some inspirations, different kind of human beings, it can be someone I know, someone I don't, a girl, a boy. So usually when I start, quite right away, some inspirations come.