Daniel Woodrell Quotes

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

Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death.

Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me.

I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way.

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

Raymond Chandler managed to write about L.A. his whole career. Should I keep going writing about New York? Is that what I should be doing? Songwriting doesn't work that way.

I don't even know how to define myself. I'm a person who writes. It's something I enjoy, and hopefully people enjoy it as well.

There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write.

Even though I don't write about things that come from my life because I'm lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that's really what being a writer is, probably.

I used to think that when I finished a book, I was finished with it. But it's like a wonderful Hydra. Every time a head disappears, more heads appear, so I will be writing for the rest of my life. The more books I write, the more books I find that I still have to write about. I use it like an inspiration, and that's wonderful.

Finding the discipline, the motivation, the focus, the passion to sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen every day and then to make it come alive with characters and with plot is incredibly exciting and at the same time terrifying and frustrating, and sometimes it comes easy and sometimes it comes really hard.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

I looked back at the years since I'd left college and thought of the list of things I'd have liked to do. I'd always wanted to write a book - not a small undertaking. I never felt I had the time or creative energy to spare in order to write one as well as I wanted.

I don't know how I do it, but I've written about everything. I've written about my shoes.

I never have found out all I want to know about writing and realize I never will.

If a writer is good at what he does, it's not easy to do a good job every day... To invent something new is almost an impossible task.

I don't know if I want to be a writer.

I like to write. Prolific is part of who I am.

After so many years, I don't really think writing has to be absolutely new. No. It has to be good work.

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.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

For any writers at all, read everything you can and then put your butt in the chair and write. That's all there is to it.

I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.