Amelie Nothomb Quotes

I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

It's a lot to expect of yourself, to write a novel in a year. Anyway, you don't write a novel, you write a scene, and then another scene.

With the novels, I try to write a few pages a day - it doesn't sound much, but it can be difficult if I'm not sure where the story is going.

In order to write novels for a living - it's not pathological, but I do think and worry and brood and fidget about stuff that I'm working on.

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability.

I'm always working on my next novel, even when I'm not.

My method is, I just sit down and write a book.

I write every day. I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.

I really try to write every day. It's hard, but it's my favorite thing to do, so it's usually not too, too hard.

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 think what I've recognized over the years is that I'm very, very bingey, extremely bingey when it comes to writing.

The point always is to be writing something - it leads to more writing.

I write every day. I don't have a writing schedule. I write when I feel like it. Fortunately, I feel like it all the time. I am writing for hours. I do like to write in the morning. I start after breakfast, like 9 o'clock, and I'll write till lunch, about 1. And after lunch, I just have fun.

Writing - not being a writer with interesting habits - gets priority.

I'm very interested in writing - it just takes so much discipline, whether it's short stories or novels.

I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

Don't force yourself to write. Some people can write a novel in a few months, whereas for others it can take over a year. I'm lucky to be one of the former - but, even so, if I'm not in the mood to write, I won't. I'll go off, do something else and come back to it when I'm ready.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

I'm not a compulsive writer. I wish I could be compulsive about something. I have no regular writing routine.

At the outset, my notion of being a writer was that you would have moments of inspiration and moments of frustration, when you'd crumple up your pages and toss them away. On one side, the dustbin would fill up, and on the other side, pages would rise into a novel.

I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.

Going off the road just leaves me more time to be a writer.