Bob Balaban Quotes

I get to do what I love every day. I get to crawl into someone else's head and I love that.

I suppose I have an active imagination, and writing allows me to live it out.

I discovered writing children's books was a way to keep living in my imagination like a child. So I wrote a number of books before I started 'Magic Tree House.' Then, once I got that, I never looked back because I could be somewhere different in every single book.

When I wrote my first novel - I was nineteen - I did it very quickly. If you write fast, you feel like you're entering something not yet familiar - a world rather than thoughts about the world.

When you're a writer and you're an adult, that's something you crave - that limitless imagination and love for worlds that don't exist that you can create.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

I like that original romance of having a pen and a legal pad and going anywhere in the world and being able to write a novel with just those two things.

In every novel, I write about something - a place, an experience, an emotion - with which I'm intimately familiar, but it's also crucial to me that I take on challenges. If write only inside my comfort zone, I'll suffocate.

Writing was my route to creative expression, and I needed to write about the things that interested me.

In fiction, you have a rough idea what's coming up next - sometimes you even make a little outline - but in fact you don't know. Each day is a whole new - and for me, a very invigorating - experience.

As long as you have ideas, you can keep going. That's why writing fiction is so much fun: because you're moving people about, and making settings for them to move in, so there's always something there to keep working on.

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.

I've been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently.

When I'm happiest writing is just not knowing where it goes and just let the characters bring you there.

I had no real idea I was going to become a writer. It was just a game for me. I just liked pretending, daydreaming and imagining.

When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

I never thought about writing a novel until I was 13, and that happened by chance. I was on school holidays, and I was bored, and I thought I just wanted to do something to occupy myself instead of asking, 'What can I do, mum? Entertain me.' I started, and it really just took over, and I realised, 'Wow, this is an amazing experience.'

Now, as a writer, the whole world is your nail polish display, and what's more, you can help yourself. A thrilling, colourful array of gorgeous human peculiarity revolves before your eyes, and you still can't quite believe it's all yours for the taking.

For me, any book I'm writing is also a chance to get in and research and read and learn things that I maybe only knew a little bit about before.

Being a novelist, you can roam around with a story and indulge yourself.

I get to use fiction as a way to work out my thinking and to delight readers in the process. I can't think of any deal that's better for me, and I'm always so grateful that readers have indulged me as I argue with myself in my stories.

Fall into your sentences; enjoy writing them. Love the world you are creating.

I feel, as an artist, it's important for me to write, and that's a big part of what my journey is - being able to write my stories and talk about stuff.

Anything that feels like good characters, I am excited to do whether I write it or not. But if I don't find it in the world, I will write it myself.

When I write, I operate as a writer and a reader both - I never know what's going to happen.